All hearts are broken
by writerfan2013
Summary: John is about to change Sherlock's life forever. But Sherlock has some changes planned too. How do you know when someone loves you? And what do you do when they don't? Johnlock alert! Also, alert for unashamed soppiness. Last chapter: Agate. This is the end, but there will be more stories soon. -Sef
1. The steadiest element

Sherlock is back, then. John has found the flat at Baker Street dark and empty on his last few visits, and has only stayed a few minutes each time. The flat without Sherlock is sad, and even more so now that John is barely there himself.

But tonight the lights are on and as John lets himself in he can hear Sherlock in the living room, declaiming, and he runs up the stairs.

There are hearty greetings, exchanges of news, comparisons of the weather in March in England and Germany. Sherlock looks tired but bright, sheer nervous energy creating the glow. There are many coffee cups abandoned around the place. John clears a few up and puts the telly on and settles in his chair so he can relax and let Sherlock carry on working his way through a stack of _Der Spiegel. _

"Case?" asks John, eyeing the papers. He knows Sherlock has been doing more international ones lately. Rather sweetly he still offers to split the fee with John, even if John's sole contribution is to respond frivolously to Sherlock's terse keeping-in-touch texts.

"Practice," says Sherlock. He gives a mouth shrug, and glances at John with the slight smile which characterises their acknowledged relationship: steady loyalty from John, answered with amused tolerance from Sherlock.

John rolls his eyes and goes to make the drinks. He will stay here tonight, he thinks. It is too much of a slog back to Mary's. She will understand, she always does, especially when it comes to Sherlock. He'll text her later. But just now, he is enjoying being here, feeling like old times, watching Sherlock do what Sherlock does.

He is going to miss this.

He waits a long time before deciding there is no right moment.

* * *

"Sherlock, there's something I want to tell you. Mary and I are no longer going out."

Sherlock widens his eyes, takes in John's earnest face.

Mary. The latest in John's intermittent forays into female companionship. Dark hair, sparkling dark eyes, short and thin - elfin John called her - and jittery, understandable given the case she came to Sherlock with, a nasty ex boyfriend who she wish to prove was stalking her. So flaky was she that John ended up doing most of the interview because Sherlock had no patience for all the stammering. They solved the case and now the ex is being charged with stalking and threatening behaviour and will possibly end up behind bars. Then Mary still kept appearing at the flat and it transpired that John kissed Mary, rather a lot, in taxis travelling between locations, and then they were going out, which translates roughly as staying in at Baker Street or at Mary's Islington flat, having sex, and John disappeared from his and Sherlock's flat for days at a time.

Sherlock was glad to go to Germany, even as a favour to Mycroft, because John and Mary were euphemistically _going out_ rather noisily in John's room one evening and Sherlock could not concentrate and had to leave the flat and walk around until he estimated that even they had to have stopped for rest.

In Germany he further calculated that the relationship would be finished by the time he returned. The constant sex stage would be over and the talking about the medium term future stage would have begun and John is no good at discussing the future beyond the end of any given week, which women find frustrating, and a sign of lack of commitment. They do not see, and Sherlock is not about to point out, that John committed to Sherlock within twenty four hours of meeting him, and has hardly left his side for a day since then. John can commit. But he cannot discuss it with his girlfriends whilst he is doing it.

Sherlock has also realised that Mary's case, which was not interesting or difficult, was brought to him because of him: Sherlock. She spent the interview, when not sobbing or stuttering, looking at him. His legs, his hands, his eyes, his mouth. His groin. He got up and turned his back and stood looking out of the window, feeling John's disapproval of his rudeness and not caring because he wanted to tell her he would not take the case but honestly it was quicker to solve it and send her on her way - minus the fee - than to try to justify a decision to someone with a clear obsession. He was surprised when she switched her unsubtle attentions to John, but not sufficiently concerned to warn John about her fickleness. The most likely scenario was that she would soon meet a new person she found interesting, and John would be cast aside. Until then, they are having a lot of repetitive-sounding sex, or as they would phrase it, going out.

And now, it seems, they are not.

He leans forward, studies John's face. Is unsure whether to offer commiseration or congratulation.

"We're engaged," says John with a flourish, and Sherlock has fallen for the oldest trick in the engagement announcement book.

He stares at John. "Engaged." The cosy clutter of their home - books, microscope, newspapers, crumpled curtains, his music stand and the layer of crockery on every surface - unfocuses and only John's face, beaming, remains sharp and clear. Sound becomes muffled and all he can hear is his own heartbeat, and that is distant too.

"We're getting married. In two months. May."

Sherlock gets up quickly. "John. Congratulations," he says. "Champagne, we have some, I'll get champagne."

He stumbles to the kitchen and flings back the fridge door. Stands there with his head in the chill air for a bit, vaguely rummaging. "Got it," he calls, not looking back over his shoulder. "Hold on, I'll go and get the corkscrew, think it's in my room."

He makes it to his room and closes the door behind him.

He sits down, stands up, blinks away tears. He hopes it is a few minutes before John realises you don't open champagne with a corkscrew.

He wipes his eyes on his sleeve. He is fine. It was just a shock. John, gone forever.

John opens the door. Sherlock stands perfectly composed, apparently searching for the corkscrew.

John gazes at him for a long moment, the way John does. Sherlock is not the only one who can read people. He knows John is very good at reading him. "You daft beggar," John says, smiling. "You're not supposed to cry til the wedding itself."

"Not crying," says Sherlock. "Looking for something."

John stops smiling. "Come on, never mind champagne, we'll crack a couple of beers," he says. "There'll be plenty of champagne in a few weeks."

"You get them open," Sherlock says. "I'll be there in a minute."

"OK." John goes off and Sherlock stands and stares hard at the periodic table with his hands pressed together, and his matched index fingers against his mouth. The elements swim and quiver before his eyes and not one of them seems stable or certain.

When even the steadiest element betrays you, what is left?


	2. Hollow frost

"Will you be my best man?" John asks as the beer is opened. "There's no one else I would even ask."

"Yes. All right."

What else can he say?

* * *

They have moved from beer to scotch and John has told all about the proposal - no bended knees, just John turning to Mary as they were on the night bus home and saying he loved her and they should get married, and her saying yes very simply, and the thing was done - and Mary's family, nervous about it at first given her history with men - and how even his sister likes Mary.

"It's sudden," says John, "but I just think, why wait, when something is good? If it's perfect now, why am I waiting for it to be somehow more perfect?"

Sherlock looks at him, eyes shimmering, his fingers steepled under his chin. He does not answer Johns question. "Do you want children?" he asks instead.

John's eyes glaze a bit. "One day," he says. "Yeah." This conversation has never come up in all the time they have known each other. John takes the opportunity to learn a tiny bit more about Sherlock, his inner self: "How about you?"

Sherlock considers. His eyes flicker darkly this way and that. John expects him to evade, but he says, "It would be the most fascinating project of my life."

John is amazed. Sherlock and fatherhood. Really? It gives him an odd tingle to think of it.

"A fresh brain," says Sherlock intently. "An _empty_ brain for me to fill with only what is important. A young and eager mind to shape and care for." He is speaking breathlessly, passionately. "It would be an incredibly rewarding challenge."

John is astonished. He has never heard Sherlock say a word on the subject before. He lifts the scotch tumbler to sip it, puts it down untasted. "You do know you're not supposed to brainwash your children," he says, trying for light-heartedness.

"Not true," says Sherlock. "Humanity's strength is its ability to pass on learned knowledge from one generation to the next. It's why we have the longest period of dependence of any mammal apart from orangutans. We, the species, are exactly and specifically intended to brainwash our offspring, as you melodramatically put it."

This at least sounds more like the Sherlock John knows. But it is still mind-boggling. Him with children. Filling their heads with forensic science. Is that what happened to him? John still does not know much about his childhood. _A mind to shape and care for._ A strangely tender phrase, from him.

"Blimey. Fair enough." John remains astonished. "I never thought you did," he says. "Want to have kids, I mean." He treads cautiously, as Sherlock does not welcome comment on his private life, and this is almost as private as it gets.

Sherlock shrugs. "It is a natural urge and in my case it would be selfish in the extreme not to pass on what I know."

"I guess that's true."

He wants to ask more - how? with who? - but Sherlock gives a forbidding stare. So he clinks glasses with him instead and turns the talk back to murder.

* * *

Four weeks until the wedding and Mary's family has gone into overdrive. Her mother, her sisters, constantly round, shrieking over website pictures of dresses and cakes and winding Mary up with their insistent suggestions on the guests, the food, the music, the theme –

"What? What's a theme, surely the theme of a wedding is getting married?" John is already sick of being engaged and quite ready to skip to the honeymoon.

"You don't understand!" she shouts and goes to cry in their bedroom. After ten minutes he brings her a cup of tea and offers to elope but she is brave and says she will put her foot down. No theme. They do not need one.

He smiles at her, so tiny and fragile, toughing up against the wedding bullies. "Just say the word on elopement and I'll get my ladder."

"I want it to be public," she says. "Me and you." He kisses her forehead, her cheek, the back of her neck where her short dark hair runs up over her scalp, and she nestles against him like a child. "Just us," she repeats.

"No problem with that at all," he says. "Feel free to leave out anybody except you, me and Sherlock."

She does not even think that is weird, and that's one of the reasons he loves her.

Next day the wedding planners are back with magazines and wedding diet plans and Mary is weeping and yelling all over again.

After a week of special hell John goes with his bag to Baker Street at midnight and sleeps in his old bed.

Sherlock asks with his eyes the next morning. "Just wedding fever," says John, clapping a hand on Sherlock's shoulder as he looks up from his microscope at the kitchen table. "I can't stand it and you are well out of it."

"Come and stay any time," Sherlock says casually.

John gives him an impulsive one armed hug. Physical contact has been completely lacking at home lately what with Mary being no longer a person in her own right but merely The Bride. Whenever John comes near he is shooed away with hissed warnings about dresses and bad luck.

"What would I do without you?" he asks now, and bats the tops of Sherlock's head with his jaw.

"I don't know," Sherlock says, "what will you?"

For a second there is a hollow frost in the air, but then Sherlock pats John's hand on his shoulder and slides away saying, "Come and look at these tunnel plans and tell me what you think is missing."

* * *

"I'll be round here so often you'll be sick of me," John says as he packs. He has not left a huge footprint on the flat, he knows. Almost all the debris is Sherlock's, just like it was before he moved in.

Sherlock is leaning on the door frame of John's room. He has cut his hair, John notices. Well, so has John. Ready for the big day.

"You'll hardly know I've gone," John says. "Let's face it, half the time you don't notice if I'm here or not anyway."

Sherlock pushes off the door jamb abruptly and stalks off, saying, "I think those documents should have downloaded by now."

John sighs. Sherlock is so touchy when he is bored. He needs a case.

John hopes one turns up soon.


	3. Agate ring

The flat is full of light and noise. The curtains are pulled back, windows are open and street sounds fill the living room. There is a tray of carnations on the sofa and a crate of champagne, another of flutes. A silver car is outside with a liveried chauffeur leaning against its flank.

John is in his suit, a charcoal pinstripe with a sharp cut, purchased without hesitation (even at the staggering cost) from Sherlock's own tailor. He has his buttonhole in already and has put the ring boxes into Sherlock's pocket. Sherlock is wearing a suit of sufficiently similar fabric to look right beside John, without actually matching. His choice, and again John did not question it. This is one area where Mary has had no input.

"This is it then. Ready?" John gives Sherlock a grin.

"Yes. No." He is not ready. He is as ready as he will ever be.

John straightens Sherlock's cravat. It did not need straightening but will again now. "I'm going to miss you," he mutters, frowning at the knot he is in the process of ruining. "And this." He waves at the flat. "And you, mostly you."

"Don't go," says Sherlock, the only time he has ever expressed this. "Stay."

He stares fiercely at John. His eyes are watering. More tears. Does he do nothing but weep these days? Basically.

"No," says John softly. "I won't. But I will miss you a lot."

He reaches up and kisses Sherlock. Left cheek, right cheek, then gently on the lips.

Sherlock clutches at him wildly, and kisses him back with sloppy inaccuracy.

John laughs, pushes him away. "What, on my wedding day? My fiancée would have your guts for garters. But I won't tell her."

Sherlock steps back, his face composed, eyes shielded by his lashes, and adjusts his cravat as if nothing has happened.

"If I'd known," says John. "But I didn't."

Sherlock darts an incredulous look at him and then away. "You know now," he states. Accusing.

"It's too late now," says John. "I keep my promises."

He never promised Sherlock anything.

The catering people appear and remove the crates of bottles and glasses, and the flowers. Sherlock and John stand on the rug not looking at each other until they have gone.

John scrabbles in his pocket. "I was going to give this to you tonight," he says. "But something tells me you're going to disappear after the ceremony."

He catches Sherlock's guilty expression before Sherlock can hide it.

"Thought so. So have it now." John takes a small flocked box from his jacket. "For being best man," he says. "I know it's not your thing to wear jewellery, but I hope - I hope you get it out and look at it sometimes and think about all the good stuff."

He opens the box and shows Sherlock that inside is a small signet ring. Nothing on it, just a smooth grey gem. "Agate," says Sherlock automatically. John nods. Sherlock takes the ring, sees his initials and John's, and the date, engraved inside.

He cannot speak.

He takes it and puts it on, left little finger.

Hesitates.

"Oh go on then," says John. He wraps Sherlock in his arms and gives him a sweet kiss, lips, soft mouth, and Sherlock feels the warm tongue caressing his and almost drops. His hands go down instinctively to the small of John's back under his suit jacket, but know this is forbidden, and rest instead on his shoulder blades. John rubs his hand in the short hair at the nape of Sherlock's neck, and sighs as his kiss is returned with more passion than Sherlock intended.

John lets go and goes to check in the mirror as if for lipstick, for traces of Sherlock, but there are none.

"Come on," he says. "The car's outside. Best not be late."

* * *

Sherlock stays for the ceremony. Mary wears a dark blue silk dress and a single white flower in her short hair, and John cannot stop smiling when he looks at her.

Sherlock stays for the awful photographer and the wedding breakfast at an awful hotel. He gives a best man's speech that makes people laugh, that makes Mary glow with pride at all the lovely things said about John, (every word of which is true), that makes a tear run down John's cheek as Sherlock shakes his hand and toasts him.

He waits until the bride and groom get up from the top table and begin to mingle with their guests, and then he looks at John, who is looking at Mary, and walks away.

Outside is a black car. "Heathrow," says Sherlock. His bag is beside him.

"Going anywhere nice, sir?" asks the cabbie.

"The rest of my life," says Sherlock. "Judge for yourself."

The cabbie frowns.

"Berlin," says Sherlock. "Work." He folds his arms and hardens his expression. No more tears. There is work to be done, horrible, difficult, distracting, thankful work.

He sits perfectly still on his seat and stares out of the window.

London slips away.


	4. Dandelions between the cracks

"I can't believe he got us this," Mary says. "Such a generous wedding gift. The honeymoon!"

"It's amazing," says John.

And odd, he thinks. Sherlock even chose the hotel. Specified the particular room on the top floor of this antique hotel on the cliffs of a coastal resort near Rome.

John found a handwritten note in his suitcase. _Concealed door in corner of room. Leads to the roof terrace. Fabulous view and a suitable place for a tryst. Yours, Sherlock._

John has found the door, hidden behind a panel in the room, which is not wall papered but covered with slightly cushioned fabric wall panels. One of the panels is hinged and behind it is a set of brick steps. He leads Mary up there and they both gasp. The blue Mediterranean, sparkling in the May sunshine, and across to the right, the rough red terracotta roofs and rendered walls of houses in the old town, bleached white buildings seeming timeless under this ancient sky. There are some old plastic chairs up here but nothing else. This is the unofficial roof. Sherlock postscripted his note that John must not let on to the hotel that they are using it.

There are dandelions between the cracks in the concrete paving and the whole flat roof is scruffy and unkempt but they are under a blindingly blue sky in total privacy and John fetches a blanket from the bedroom and they lie on the roof and he unbuttons Mary's shirt and her shorts. He removes her bra with the shirt still hanging loose around her shoulders, slides off the shorts, and as she gives him that dark look he fell in love with with first moment he saw her he slips her knickers down her legs and lays her flat on the blanket and his clothes disappear and they make love with more enthusiasm than they managed last night downstairs in the ostentatiously labelled Honeymoon Tower Room, and Mary says, "I love you John," and he says, "You too, always," and they are at it so long that John's back gets sunburned and next day when he brings her to the roof again he has the sun lotion in his pocket so as not to give them any reason to stop.

* * *

It is perfect, of course, but John worries that Sherlock will turn up here, in Italy, perhaps appearing at breakfast one morning as if it was normal. Or perhaps he is just here, watching them, which seems more likely.

He doesn't though. He's not.

John wishes he had not thought that.

John and Mary are having evening drinks on the beach terrace, watching the sea and feeling aches in intimate places which makes them both giggle as they catch each other's eye.

"It's beautiful here," says Mary.

"I love you," says John.

"He's such a good friend to you," says Mary. She means Sherlock.

"Yes," says John. "The best." If he did show up right now John would actually be pleased. He knows that is a little strange, to wish to see your best friend on your honeymoon, but it is just that he and Sherlock, well, it's a different kind of friendship. Sherlock is different.

Mary doesn't think it is strange. She understands.

"He's no more than you deserve. We'll have to thank him." She sips her sparkling rosé and looks dreamily at the ocean.

"Of course." John is not sure where Sherlock is right now. He texted him a few times while they were travelling, but got no reply. Busy on a case, presumably. "When we get back. We'll pop round, or have him over for some food." If he is in eating mode.

"I've never met anyone like him," she says.

"There is no one like him." John says it with pride. His friend. Unique.

"He's a bit weird..." This is the first time she has ever commented on Sherlock in any way which might not be wholly positive. One of John's favourite things about her is her obvious fondness for and tolerance of Sherlock. "But he's nice," she adds.

"Yes. Nice."

Nice would not be John's word for Sherlock. What would his word be?

Beautiful. Intelligent. Intense. Mysterious. -Captivating.

He does not offer these to Mary as alternatives.

Mary is staring at the waves. This part of the beach belongs to the hotel.

"Let's skinny dip," she says suddenly. "I've never done it before."

"Never skinny dipped -?" He is scandalised. Ready to correct this outrageous gap in her experience.

"No. I've led a sheltered life." She is smiling. She knows that teaching her new things is one of his favourite turn-ons.

"Let me rip away that shelter," says John. "And this annoying bikini."

* * *

John opens the magazine and sighs. Trapped in a Roman hairdresser's with an hour of completely unnecessary highlights to wait for and nothing to entertain himself with except the view of Mary's head covered in foils, and some European sub sibling of _Hello!_ magazine.

He flips through. Dignity suggests he read the news on his phone but there is no signal. He doesn't fancy his book - too bright in here for proper reading anyway, even with the phone at max brightness - and the raucous radio precludes the thought required for the scrabble app...

Some of the women in the celeb magazine are rather gorgeous.

He gazes, secure in the knowledge that his face reveals nothing but husbandly boredom.

Turns a page. Wow. A stunner. Very tall, ice blonde, short hair like that girl from the Cranberries. Or Annie Lennox, god, showing his age. But this girl is Scandinavian looking, distinctively European. Pale blue eyes, almost colourless. Curvaceous, especially in the dove grey satin evening gown she is wearing to the Berlin Film Festival. The gown clings to her hips, around her breasts, and falls open over her upper thigh, showing lightly tanned smooth flesh. Perfect legs.

John's mouth involuntarily forms an appreciative _oooh_, and he adjusts himself before Mary notices.

Her name: Liesl Messernacht, and she is some kind of model or actress, and she has a new film in which she kisses that bloke with the perfect hips and the tiny shorts.

There are pictures of her on red carpets.

And over the page, there are pictures of her at the after-festival party, on the arm of an equally tall and svelte man in a dark grey evening jacket, whose hand is on her lower back, her upper bottom really, and he is laughing and turning his face to her, away from the camera -

And it is Sherlock.


	5. Jackdaw

The hairdresser's is full of steam and acrid chemicals. Italian ladies in neat summer suits sit with their heads under heat lamps, pinching their cups of coffee between forefinger and thumb, gossiping. Outside the window, dazzling sunshine shows a busy street, cars the shape of breadbins parked nose-in to the kerb, every one of them with a missing wing mirror or dented bumper, and women and men unfolding themselves from these tiny vehicles in smooth linen suits, Armani shades, perfect hair. One woman comes in and is greeted with kisses and loud exclamations from the patron. There is fussing and protesting at the state of her coiffure and giggling at how it will be improved and it is just like a small town hairdresser's at home except for all the immaculate tailoring.

John sits shocked in the midst of all this drama, staring at the picture of the voluptuous blonde woman and Sherlock at the Berlin Film festival after-party. Then he starts reading the article. Yes. His name. Well known consulting detective. Famous for (insert names of his greatest successes). Handsome and eligible. Long term bachelor. Private life kept very private. Now often seen in the company of Liesl Messernacht.

Sherlock and this woman. Really? Surely not. Sherlock isn't, he doesn't like women, he only likes men, doesn't he, in fact, he only likes John.

Doesn't he?

His hand on her bottom.

Laughing.

An act, obviously. He is an accomplished actor.

"Espresso, signor?" The elderly gent who seems to be the manager appears with a tiny cup of steaming black liquid.

John takes it, saying faintly, "Grazie."

The old boy sees the magazine on John's lap and smiles appreciatively. He cuts his eyes at Liesl in her backless dress, the curve of her spine and Sherlock's hand at the end of that curve. "Bella," he says, checking John's face for understanding. "Si? Si, bella, bella." He jiggles his head at Sherlock too. "Eh.. bello!"He gives the picture a 'lucky devil!' grunt.

Sherlock in a suit the colour of a jackdaw's throat. Yes, bello, bello, bello.

* * *

Mary needs to relax after an arduous morning having her hair slightly amended, so John goes for a walk while she rests in the hotel.

She sends him texts as he wanders around the dry golden streets. _Where are you now?_

_The Post Office. It has red letterboxes like at home. J x_

_Will you send me a postcard!_

_What do you want on it? J x_

_A handsome man! Naked!_

_Will see what I can do. J x_

_I mean you, silly._

_I know. J_ x

He gets her a postcard of an orangutan.

There is not much town, and it is a hot day. John takes refuge with a cold drink, under an awning outside the quietest cafe, and reads some of his book.

He is bored.

He wonders what Sherlock is doing right now. Something mad, most likely. Something not boring.

John sends him a text. _Just saw a pic of you with the very glamorous Miss Messernacht. How did you meet? J_

He presses Send before he realises he should probably have said, how are you, before leaping in with a question.  
It doesn't matter anyway because there is no reply.

* * *

There is no contact at all from Sherlock for the whole of the honeymoon, not a dicky bird, and John knows that this is not bizarre at all, because your honeymoon is the one episode of your life when people still hesitate to interrupt you. It feels strange though, after years of seeing or hearing from Sherlock every day. As Mary and John arrive home to her flat in Islington, John realises how much he has missed him.

John carries Mary over the threshold and into the bedroom but she wriggles away, laughing, and says she needs to ring her mum to tell her they're back.

John estimates he would have about half an hour alone with his wife before her family descended upon them, wanting details of Italy. "I ought to pop over to Baker Street," he says. "If Sherlock's still away the post will be piling up." He still has his coat on.

"Mrs Hudson will get it," Mary says. She is dragging out her laptop onto the kitchen table, checking Facebook. Her phone is in her hand, ready for all the phone calls that couldn't be made at mobile-roaming prices.

She is right. "Still. Ought to show my face."

"You just can't keep away," Mary says fondly. She can talk. She has suggested several times on the way home that they have Sherlock over for dinner, for drinks, that they go out for food and meeting friends. She is keen to spend time with him and John appreciates this, that she is not fazed by Sherlock's peculiarities. But he would like the first post-wedding meeting to be just him and his friend. He needs to be sure things are Ok between them. To be sure that Sherlock is Ok.

Mary adds, "He's not even there." Her fingers fly on the keyboard.

"Just checking on the flat. And Mrs Hudson." He is in the hallway, keys in hand. Mary's flat, already tiny and full of odd knick knacks she has collected for reasons she has never fully explained to John, is cold and oppressive after their two weeks' absence. John needs air.

"Tell her we missed him!" she calls as she speed dials her circle of acquaintance.

"See you later."

* * *

John keeps an eye out for Liesl Messernacht in the weeks that follow. She turns up a lot, in magazines at the surgery, in the Metro paper on his Tube journey to work, in the celebrity glossies that Mary brings home. And beside Liesl, always, is Sherlock.

"Wow," says Mary, peering over John's shoulder one morning as he goggles at Sherlock in a deep crimson shirt, open collar, tight jeans, leading Liesl by the hand down the steps of the Sacre Coeur. She is there shooting a perfume ad. God knows what he is doing there. Getting a light tan, John thinks, squinting.

"He's _hot_," Mary says admiringly. She picks up the paper. Today Liesl and Sherlock have made it into the Sun, delivered direct to Mary's door.

The other photos show Sherlock and Liesl at a rooftop pool party in Madrid, promoting her film. She is in a transparent kaftan. He is wearing trunks.

"Oh my god," Mary says. "So that's what he was hiding under those schoolboy suits! So much for that prim straitlaced act! I have _got_ to show my friends."

She takes the paper and puts it in her work bag.

And just like that, Sherlock's body becomes public property.

John hates it.

* * *

Sitting on a bench in the concrete and buddleia square near the surgery, John is once again eating a lunchtime sandwich alone and reading a paper he would not normally buy. This one is obsessed with money laundering through European enterprises to fund extremist causes.

His phone buzzes but it is Mary, asking him to pick up milk on his way home that evening.

He texts back: _OK. J x_

Turn the page. A big excited feature with a lot of grainy pictures:

A series of long lens candid shots of Liesl on the beach, somewhere very sunny. She is out of focus, no bikini top, some palm fronds in the foreground hiding her modesty.

Her companion is waist deep in the sea, wading towards her with a look of dark possessiveness, slender, muscular as he strides through the waves to the shore. Last picture, the money shot, no palm trees now as he draws her naked skin to his, their hips grinding, and kisses her deeply.

No.

Sherlock.

* * *

"You had a thing for him," Mary says casually at breakfast one Sunday.

John is reading the paper - a proper paper - and frowning at news of a terrorist threat to a Swiss rail project. "What?" His head is full of tunnels and secret surveillance and, by association, Mycroft.

"Sherlock." She butters toast, glances across rather coyly. "You had a crush on him, kind of a schoolboy thing."

He blinks at her. Feels a blush forming.

"I get it," she says. "He's, well, he's special. I know. And, god, he's lush. Right?"

John is not about to nod to that question. He just flicks his eyebrows, which could be yes or no or indifference.

"The pictures are just droolsome," she adds unnecessarily, and rather tactlessly, John thinks. Some of the pictures are on the fridge. Their celebrity friend.

"So," she goes on, "I get it. You had this thing. Not just... hero worship." She darts her eyes at him, cautious on this topic. She knows John is protective of his friendship with Sherlock, and is treading carefully. But why quite so carefully? He is about to find out. "You had a physical thing for him. -Don't worry," she adds quickly. "I know it was nothing."

John turns hot all over. He keeps still though, and speaks calmly. "That obvious, huh?" he says with a chuckle. It's nothing, it is exactly as she says, a thing, nothing, nothing.

"You would gaze at him with puppydog eyes," she laughs. "I thought it was adorable."

He smiles stiffly.

"I would have been jealous," she says. "But obviously nothing was going to happen. I mean, you don't like men and he didn't like anybody. And anyway, we all have crushes."

John notices that she is gazing at the topless Sherlock pic on the fridge as she is talking.

And then he gets pissed off. It happens in a flash. Rage. Rage because his wife is looking at a semi naked picture of Sherlock.

He springs up and slams his mug in the sink. Runs the tap for a bit, fists clenching.

"Crushes are healthy and natural," he says, looking out of the window at the recycling bins. He deliberately relaxes his hands. "Everyone has crushes on occasion."

There is no point denying the Sherlock thing, and admitting it is the much better part to be honest about.

He is really angry about her looking at, ogling Sherlock. Sherlock! How dare she...

...because she is married to John, and should have eyes only for him. Obviously. Apart from those healthy crushes of course.

"Nothing ever happened between you though, did it," she states. The butter knife is in her hand, blade side towards John.

"No," says John.

And there it is. The first big lie.


	6. Gladness and cold linoleum

It was nothing. Nothing is what happened.

November. Frost already glittering the ground at ten pm and the key sticking in the Yale lock of 221B.

They are a bit drunk.

They are a bit high on adrenaline. Grown men with the giggles. A lucky escape from that evening's crazed killer, a near miss with an articulated lorry, grazes and scrapes all over both of them. Staggering into the flat and collapsing into their chairs.

"Beer," John says, raising his arm weakly, and for once Sherlock is the one to get up. He reappears and places the cold bottle in John's outstretched hand. His fingers are warm as John's close over them. He stands at John's shoulder, leaning over to hand him the drink.

"You did well tonight," he says quietly, close to John's hair.

"Couldn't have done anything without you," John replies, automatically but truthfully. "Wouldn't have known anything needed doing."

"No," agrees Sherlock, but with fondness.

They lean back in their chairs, surrounded by the comfortable clutter of their home, and drink the beer. On no dinner and a lot of racing round, it is quick to sink and to down a second too, not like them but the evening seems to call for it.

After a while they are sitting with their legs stretched out, shoes off, each person's feet resting on the right arm of the other's chair. They are staring at the ceiling and playing a silly word game which Sherlock is winning, mainly because he keeps making John laugh with over the top contributions.

John can't stop laughing, and Sherlock keeps smiling, pleased, and they smile at each other and are full of gladness for their friendship.

Then Sherlock puts his hand on John's socked feet and runs his fingers up from ankle to toe of his left foot and then over on to the sole, grasping it with a familiar motion which sends a signal straight to John's groin.

Sherlock runs his fist up to John's toes and back down towards the heel. He is still smiling, appears to be doing this idly, but it is profoundly intimate and John has lost all thought except Sherlock's fingers pressing and gripping and stroking him.

There is no question: it is sexual.

John gasps as Sherlock's thumb digs a little into soft sole flesh.

Sherlock slides quickly forward off his chair, letting go of John's foot, and comes to rest on his knees in front of John's chair. He takes John's chin in his hands and without hesitation kisses John on the lips. His face is serious, tender, and the kiss, though brief, is brimming with passion.

John feels his breathing go ragged. He puts his hands on Sherlock's shoulders. "Hey, hold on, what are you doing..." Token objections. He is actually moving his hands even as he makes feeble protests, up to the nape of Sherlock's neck, pulling him closer for another taste of Sherlock in lust.

Within a second there are lips, whole mouths, tongues, gasping and grappling and rolling off the chair onto the floor until John feels cold linoleum under his back and sits up suddenly and says, "Ow, what the hell -?"

He rubs his head, which got bashed, and sees Sherlock lying flat on the floor with his hand on his own forehead, pushing aside his fringe.

Sherlock looks shocked and embarrassed. Horrified.

"Sorry," says John. "I didn't mean - "

He tries to laugh but arousal does not make for humour, not when you have gone from nought to horizontal snogging in twenty seconds.

Sherlock stands abruptly, and holds out his hand - which is now horribly cold - to John and hauls him up. "Night," he says, and gives a curt nod.

And walks away.

_Night_?

John is left standing, totally aroused by just a kiss, in the middle of the living room.

Sherlock's face. The longing in his eyes. The seriousness as he first kissed John. The blatantly provocative way he - well, the way he treated John's foot like a quite different part of John's body and clearly knew the effect it would have on that part.

John's own reaction. Not just _whatever_, not just drunken snog, mates, blokes, too much to drink and post-chase adrenaline. No, this was passion and want and amazed hunger for the taste and warmth and touch of this suddenly revealed, incredibly sensual person who obviously wanted him too.

Who then leapt away as John hesitated, jolted to reality by a bit of cold hard floor.

Who left John completely hanging and miles from sleep.

Yeah, nothing has ever happened between them.


	7. Remnant sunshine

"What is he like to live with?" Mary asks John as they sit outside a pub near John's surgery in some welcome June sun. They are at a picnic table, incongruous on the noisy street with cars inching past six feet away.

John has texted Sherlock to see if he is around tonight, but got no reply. It is a shame, because it is John and Mary's one-month wedding anniversary.

"What's he like?" John sighs, smiling. "Impossible. But once you're there with him, impossible to be any other way."

Mary's eyes are shining. "That's beautiful. What a beautiful thing to say. Tell me more things like that, I want to hear it all."

John puts his hand over hers and smiles, but he thinks, _No, you really don't._

He remembers:

* * *

The day after the kiss, John determined that there must be no atmosphere between him and Sherlock. Nothing must be allowed to upset their friendship, especially not something as silly as this. An urge, a physical urge, a physical response, everyone has them, they are adults, it is fine, just a crazy moment and whatever had prompted it, whatever impulse or (more likely, given it was Sherlock) momentary curiosity, they had to move on.

John goes and fetches the papers – Sherlock is still in bed – and reads them, and drinks coffee, and works out what to say. Sherlock is never one for heart to hearts, so John reasons that he will just corner Sherlock and say his piece and clear the air.

Sherlock emerges eventually in PJ bottoms and navy blue dressing gown, and droops across the kitchen to the coffee pot without making eye contact with John.

John can tell that he is paying attention, though. Sherlock might be stumbling around zombie-like, but John senses that insistent mind, feeling for clues.

He goes for it. "Sherlock. Sherlock."

Sherlock raises his head from his coffee mug with a sulky expression, snaps his gaze away again.

"Right," says John. "Listen. Last night. I don't want things to be awkward between us. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you." Utter stillness from the dressing-gown side of the room. "I never meant to –" careful! Mentioning feelings, Sherlock does not do feelings - "upset you."

No eye contact, no movement. Sherlock is resentful wariness personified.

"So I want things to be Ok between us. I'm not embarrassed. An urge. It's just what it is. And for what it's worth –" going out on a limb here, possibly digging himself a bigger hole –"it was nice."

There. Said. Done. Nothing denied, no accusations, reassurances given.

Sherlock lifts his head very slightly. His dark eyelashes are lowered but he is looking at John. He says nothing, however, just takes his mug and retreats past the fridge to his bedroom.

John takes a deep breath. No row, no red faces, no uncomfortable emotions. Not that Sherlock does emotions. Sorted.

Sherlock disappears for two days after that – a foreign case, John couldn't get time off work to go with him – and when he comes back, he walks into the flat straight over to where John is ruining his back by typing with the laptop on the sofa, and touches his shoulder, and then, maintaining eye contact, kisses his cheek. "Apology accepted," Sherlock says as if mere moments have passed since they were standing in the kitchen.

John laughs. "Just don't let it happen again," he says, and then kicks himself and adds, "I'm kidding, sorry, just pleased you're back."

Remembering it now, sitting in gritty London sunshine with a mouthful of chemical lager, John thinks with a wave of nausea that his reaction, his words, were more than a little ambiguous.

In fact, looking at it from this distance, seven months later, things look quite different. If you stripped out everything else and considered that Sherlock kissed him, that John let him, kissed him back even, and then told him that he liked it and that more would be OK in the future...

...Yes, that casts a rather brighter light over what happened next.

A physical pain shoots through John's gut and he winces.

"What's the matter?" asks Mary. "You've gone all funny." She draws her hand away from his, her face showing distaste.

"This is a terrible pint," says John. "I'm getting another. 'Scuse me."

He stands at the bar long after the pint has been pulled and the note handed over, staring at the jar of sliced lemons in their preservative fluid. The lemons drift in the jar, floating, sinking as a new slice is pulled up to the surface, a sliver from a fruit that ripened months ago and far away, now lifted free of its dim liquid to bring a tang of remnant sunshine to the present day.

* * *

In a post office in the seventh _arrondissement_, Sherlock writes the address on a plain brown envelope. His script is rapid and clear. Then he takes a postcard of the Eiffel Tower out of his jacket and turns it over. On this he writes more slowly, each letter forming gradually on the cheap white card. A few words only. The date. His initial, large and bold.

He holds the card between his fingers, for the three seconds in which he would kiss it, except for the idea that the press, or Liesl's entourage, might be watching, and then he seals the card in the envelope, attaches the stamps, and pushes it into a post box.

He straightens, his face completely neutral, and checks his watch. Time to go. She is expecting him.


	8. Categories

Spotting non- Sherlockisms becomes a hobby for John and Mary.

It begins when Mary reads aloud from the pub's copy of _The Sun_ as they sit inside the Eagle off Old Street, sheltering from summer rain with Greg Lestrade and a couple of his mates from the station. It is a policeman's pub, the station being two doors down. Not Greg's local, but a location halfway between Greg's life and John's, now. Mary joined them when she finished work at the law chambers where she is the office manager.

Mary, now bored with man-chat centring around football and work, reads out: "Sherlock enjoys his cappuccino near the Moulin Rouge whilst waiting for Liesl to finish shooting a scene."

"Cappuccino!" John snorts. "Black two sugars is more like it." _Pointless froth_, Sherlock says when offered something which has involved a milk foamer.

"He's drinking it," says Mary, pointing.

So he is. "Ok," says John, "but that's not like him."

"I guess it is now," she says, admiring the shot of Sherlock in a narrow black suit sipping from a gilt-edged cup, lime trees framing the Metropolitain entrance in the background.

"Now he's got a posh bird he drinks posh coffee," says Greg, but he frowns at John as he says it. John has not said anything to Greg but knows Greg is as baffled by Sherlock's celebrity lifestyle as John.

"And he's smoking again," she says, peering at Sherlock's right hand. A cigarette with two gold stripes beneath the filter, is limp in the webbing between his index and middle fingers as his hand lies palm up on the metal table.

"Huh. So much for patches." John is unimpressed.

"I expect his girlfriend smokes," says Greg. "I never could quit when the other person was forever lighting up." Again that suspicious look at John.

John checks his phone. "We ought to get going," he says to Mary. "Your mum's coming round with those, what is it, those scrapbooks."

"Bye, Greg," says Mary sweetly, and smiles, but John feels that all is not right. She is giving off a negative emotion that he cannot pinpoint ... something like ...disappointment.

After that evening, Mary regularly compare notes with John on Sherlock – celeb Sherlock versus John's Sherlock, marvelling at the differences, or rather, Mary marvels at all the new things being revealed. "I never knew that," she says, often.

John no longer corrects her, but simply collects in his mind all the ways in which public-property Sherlock is not the person he knows.

It makes him feel better, in fact, to think that this whole thing with Liesl and the international socialising is some kind of act. That the real Sherlock is underneath, and one day will be back in Baker Street, creating noxious experiments and looking up with a pleased face as John pushes open the door.

Until then, John creates two categories in his mind: Sherlock and non-Sherlock.

There are pictures of him frowning in irritation at his phone: Sherlock. Posing, relaxed and smiling at Liesl, for the press outside Charles de Gaulle airport: non-Sherlock. Being awarded a glass vase for detective services to a bank in Frankfurt, and scowling because he hates having to thank people for a thing he never asked for and does not want: Sherlock. A tourist's snap of him walking hand in hand with Liesl in the (supposedly) private garden of their Paris hotel: non-Sherlock.

Mary likes the Sherlock and Liesl pictures a lot. She says it is romantic, and John supposes it is. But Mary studies Liesl in the photos very carefully as if for clues, not love. "Do you think I would look good with blonde hair?" she asks John, and John, sensing a trap, says he loves her no matter what kind of hair she has.

Sherlock stares challengingly out of the photographs, smiling at Liesl but not the cameras. He looks good beside his girlfriend, she holds his arm very proudly, and John's brain just cannot compute all the ways in which this seems unnatural and false.

"Now we're really getting to know him," says Mary approvingly, and John just looks away.

Nobody knows Sherlock like he does.

* * *

It has now been five weeks and two days since John has seen or heard from Sherlock. All John's information comes from the press, and Mary always seems to have got to the article or picture before John.

There has been nothing new posted on Sherlock's website since before the wedding in May. No case histories, although he has apparently been working.

John's blog - similarly dormant - has had a few enquiries, but they have been principally from journalists wanting an update on Sherlock, and John has not been able to help them.

John sits at his desk at the surgery, his finger over the Next Patient buzzer, and then takes out his phone instead. It will only take a moment.

John sends Sherlock a message. He has agonised, in the middle of many nights, over what to put, especially anything which might be construed as affectionate and beyond the terse boundaries of their established texting relationship. But he cannot ignore this worry any longer, and he has been thinking a lot about things lately. He thinks – he suspects – he knows that Sherlock is not OK.

John and Mary's wedding day. Sherlock saying, Now you know. Asking him outright not to get married.

Sherlock was - crying, and John still walked away.

Of course. He had to. He could not leave Mary at the altar, did not want to, he loved her, loves her. But he cares for Sherlock too. He knows Sherlock does not have friends other than him, knows that Sherlock depends on him in many ways, trusts him above all others. All that happened between them over Christmas and New Year, never spoken of, never dealt with, was it Sherlock's way of holding onto him? Keeping him from seeking out female company? But then Mary sought John out.

And now Sherlock has vanished into a world of paparazzi and this woman, this girlfriend, and John does not want to flatter himself but it seems like a rebound kind of thing, in some bizarre Sherlock way, an extreme action to move on from being hurt by John's not wanting to stay his friend and flatmate forever.

John must have really been wrapped up in Mary not to have twigged that Sherlock does not having good coping mechanisms for change.

So now he holds the phone steady in his right hand, and types, _Sherlock -How are you? Would be great to see you. Worried about you. _

John pauses. Him and Sherlock and never saying anything explicitly in any situation where the other person might actually hear it.

_I hope you're OK. I miss you. J._

John pauses again. He takes a breath, closes his eyes and sees Sherlock's stricken face, admits several things to himself.

_X_

He presses Send.

No immediate reply. This - in the old days - would be unlike Sherlock, who can text whilst doing most things.

John puts his phone away and feels bereft. It was meant to be him disappearing, not Sherlock.

The reply comes a day later as John is doing morning surgery. He doesn't see it until lunchtime . It says, _Please don't text me that kind of thing. SH._

John stares at it. Goes to delete it. Stops. Looks again.

There is a knot in his stomach.

He doesn't delete the message, and it sits there, the last message in the conversation, for a long time.

* * *

Sherlock is in the shower with the supposedly-impossible waterproof phone. He insisted on it as part of the deal, threw a tantrum, and miraculously it became available. He knew he would be glad of it. When they can make waterproof SIMs it will be truly useful.

The bathroom door is locked and Sherlock is thumbing Delete on the long and descriptive text reply he just spent five minutes composing. None of it is any use. Was it supposed to help John remember things which he has, apparently, forgotten? He has not forgotten them. That truly would be impossible. He might have deleted them, but that is unlikely. No, the memories are mis-filed, that is the problem, it always has been. People love to categorise – a human trait, an evolutionary advantage – but in Sherlock's case, being mis-filed has led to many unhappy things, this being a perfect example.

Sherlock looks again at the kiss and sighs. He stores John's message in his mind – filed correctly – and replies with something sensible. Then he goes to the phone menu, and deletes everything.


	9. Naked yet cheerful

Mycroft does his best to warn Sherlock, and Sherlock ignores him completely.

Sherlock has met him at the Diogenes in March, two days after John announced his engagement to Mary. Sherlock has recovered from the worst migraine ever and is smoking even though Mycroft told him not to. Mycroft has a private room with pale blue paintwork and plaster cherubs attached to the cornicing, tea (of course) and a stack of documents in folders covered with threats, for Sherlock to read and sign.

There follows an entertaining conversation during which Mycroft looks very seriously at Sherlock, puts down his teacup, and says, "You do understand that this will involve -" and hesitates.

Sherlock is amused. He raises his eyebrows at Mycroft and sips his own tea. For a delightful moment he thinks Mycroft is going to say _fucking_, which would be hilarious, that word in Mycroft's voice would be a chuckle in Sherlock's memory forever.

Mycroft narrows his eyes, possibly seeing Sherlock's thought, and says clearly, "Intercourse."

Sherlock smirks at him.

"I'm serious, Sherlock," Mycroft says. "This has to be completely convincing. Our extensive research -" he raises his right little finger at the manila folder beside the tea tray - "suggests that Miss Messernacht is very active sexually, and also what is known in common parlance as extremely high maintenance. Are you sure you can manage it?"

"Yes. Of course." The sooner he starts in earnest, the better. The groundwork is complete. He has estimated timescales, but honestly has no idea if these are realistic. People are difficult to predict, as he has recently learned to his cost.

He turns his mind from that rain-drenched alleyway. Stubs out his cigarette with vicious force in his saucer.

Mycroft is speaking. "There is no of course. Convince me."

"It's the woman I need to convince. And I can." He has her, already, eager for another rendezvous. There is a film festival in Berlin soon, and it is his aim for her to acknowledge him as her partner before then. _Boyfriend_, he thinks. _I am going to be her boyfriend._ It is surreal.

There is a pause. Mycroft studies Sherlock's face, deducing, and Sherlock huffs and submits to it with bad grace because it is necessary. He looks up at the cherubs, naked yet cheerful, childlike but armed with bows and arrows.

"You will need to maintain focus at all times," Mycroft says. "And I am, honestly, concerned, that after - John's news -" (Is that tact? He must actually be concerned. Highly unusual. Sherlock sits up a little.) " - I'm worried that you may become emotionally compromised."

Sherlock is full of scorn. "Do you think I'm going to fall in love with this woman? Because that is not only insulting, it is -" He was going to say, biologically impossible, but in fact the biological, chemical possibility of love is very real. Human bonding across the boundaries of supposed sexual preference. It is not going to happen, though.

Mycroft's lips are pursed as he notes Sherlock's stumble. "No. I am saying I think you are tired, and - sad. And those are not the best two conditions under which to enter such a difficult and potentially dangerous operation."

Sherlock shakes his head in frustration. "I can do this. I will do this. Why must you always question my abilities?"

Mycroft sighs.

Sherlock gets up and paces around the room. He has ignored the manila folder with its photos of Liesl Messernacht in intimate situations with her previous lovers. Better to make the lie as true as possible: when he undresses her, it must be the first time he has seen her naked.

Mycroft watches him. "I wish this was not you. But you have placed yourself perfectly for this task."

"Yes." On purpose.

Mycroft drums his fingers. "There had better not be ulterior motives for this, Sherlock."

Sherlock whirls around in alarm. "What? What do you mean?"

"Jealousy. Are you doing this to wreak some kind of revenge on John Watson?"

Relief. He has no clue. "No. Of course not. John is my friend." The word emerges evenly, no crack or catch. "He has only just told me about the wedding, and this has been in place for weeks."

Mycroft studies him. Sherlock knows he knows about John, and that would be annoying, but for the thought that Mycroft understands. Sherlock feels a wobble in his cloak of indifference, and turns away, saying, "There is something else this mission will require if it is going to work."

"What's that?" Mycroft asks.

Sherlock looks back and smiles wolfishly. "A great deal of money."

Mycroft rolls his eyes. "You mean in addition to your already considerable fee?"

Sherlock shrugs.

"Funds will be available," says Mycroft disdainfully.

Sherlock picks up his cigarettes from Mycroft's tea table - a new brand, for a new Sherlock. "Thank you. And now I must catch a plane. I have a difficult and anecdotally sexually insatiable German actress to woo."


	10. Cherish the silk

It is early April, John is embroiled in wedding preparations in Islington, and Sherlock is in Zurich, in freezing Switzerland. He does not feel the cold, however, because his mind is clear and he is working.

It is a two way seduction. Liesl wears her signature rough silk, tonight as a deep purple dress which clings and rustles as she moves, giving audible hints of the flesh underneath as she leans forward deliberately in her chair. Sherlock wears what he always wears, but has pushed his hair back off his face. The restaurant has been vetted by her people and is free of press. The timing - a fortnight before her expected triumph at Berlin - has been deemed perfect. He is good looking, independently wealthy, interesting and eager. She has not had an acknowledged boyfriend for some time. Sherlock knows that he is sufficiently different to her usual type of man to be intriguing, and sufficiently similar to be plausible.

They discuss her case - a missing diamond chain, stolen thanks to Mycroft and retrieved thanks to Sherlock - very briefly, but that is not why they are here. Sherlock asks about her work and listens intently, his eyes noting every detail of her expression, her breathing, her body language. She notices his close attention and he sees her pupils dilate. He switches to German so that she is more off guard, and she is surprised that he can do this. "You speak very well," she says.

"I am not fluent," he says. "I speak well enough to order a meal." He shrugs and glances up at her from under lowered eyelashes. "Or to explain what I want in bed." It is bold but he has already learned that she despises nothing so much as weakness.

Liesl runs her tongue along the rim of her wine glass in a most unsubtle way. Sherlock toys with his silver cigarette case on the tablecloth, setting his fingers to stroke and caress it as they talk about her filming schedule. She cannot take her eyes off his hands, and he keeps his gaze on her face, her challenging smile, her parted lips. He makes it clear that he admires her body but that this is not the point, for him. She is impressed. She is not used to anyone able to resist her once she is on offer. He talks about his work and the difficulty of finding anyone who does not bore him.

She agrees wholeheartedly. Her lifestyle, it requires stamina, strength, a determination she can see demonstrated in him.

They both agree that this is going to happen.

He takes her hand as they wait in the restaurant foyer for their car, and feels her trembling with stored excitement. He maintains a smiling calm, and exudes control. She admires his power, and in the back of the limousine, practically pulls him horizontal to kiss him.

He laughs and kisses her chastely, setting her upright. "In the hotel," he murmurs. "Your suite."

Her hand is on his thigh. He places his over it, presses her fingers into his muscle. There will be more flesh, more touching, more invasion, very soon, and he must relish this challenge. This is little different from other roles he has adopted. He allows his fingers to cherish the silk over her spine. "Silk is made from protein," he tells her. "Its strength is also its beauty," and he lifts her hand and touches her knuckles to his lips. She puts her other hand in his hair.

As the doors close in the hotel lift he steps to her, places his hands on her shoulder blades. She is tall, her head just tilted to offer her lips to his. He kisses her before she can move in, feels her desire in her flushed skin, warm saliva, her breasts pressing against him. It is nothing entirely new and yet he too feels a heady excitement at his own power to do this if he chooses.

He does choose. And also, because he understands that she enjoys taking the lead, he breaks free from her kiss and looks into her eyes with all the intensity he can draw on, and says softly in German, "Tell me _exactly_ what you would like me to do," and leans on the lift button and the doors open. His floor. "Your suite will be crowded," he says. "I want privacy."

She looks momentarily anxious - she is not supposed to be alone and off script with such a new person - and he touches her cheek delicately with his thumb, saying, "Nothing will happen that you do not ask me for."

He draws her out of the lift and down the corridor. In his suite is a sofa, many dim lamps and the elegantly draped bed just visible through the other door. "Not as grand as your rooms," he says, leading her to the sofa, "but free of interruptions."

"They will look for me here," she says, unfastening her shoes.

"Yes, and I have told the hotel staff I am not to be disturbed." He shrugs, unbuttoning his jacket with one hand and dropping it over a chair. "Ring your people if you wish. I understand their concern. But I am not interested in it. Are you?"

She shakes her head, closes her eyes, opens them again to gaze up at him. "Their interference wearies me," she whispers.

Sherlock smiles.

He fetches wine, and pours it, but neither of them drink. They lie on the wide, low sofa, each gradually undressing the other, kissing and exploring.

"I thought you would take me straight away," Liesl says as he plays with her fingers. Her head rests on his chest.

"I know."

"This is better. Much better." Her eyes show her fascination with his level of restraint.

"Yes."

He lays his long coat over her when she falls asleep.

He stands on his small balcony in the biting night air, his shirt unbuttoned, smoking. Her minders, her manager in particular, have been evaded for this one night, but in the future there will always be people nearby. He needs to remain close to her at all times, to observe, to uncover her connections. It will be difficult, especially as this will necessitate giving up almost all of his other work. He will have to take care of his mind. He is prepared to abuse his body to whatever extent is required, but fears boredom.

He looks around at the silent street with its energy efficient streetlights and notices all the places from which a contact or an assassin might emerge. The majority of Liesl's people are geared towards shielding her from her most insistent fans; only some of them will be aware of the other activity which swirls around her. Sherlock will not be bored.

As he watches, a couple walk past on the street, hurrying home, arms around each other. They glance up at him as they pass.

He leans on the wrought iron railing, smiling and smoking, just a man with a beautiful woman asleep in his hotel room, before coming back inside and arranging himself at her feet in a suitably tender position, to rest for the night.

In the early morning she wakes, under his coat, and finds him asleep sitting on the floor with his cheek against the sofa and his hand in hers. She wakes him with kisses and leads him into bed.

She shows him how to please her and is eager to please him in return. He is the perfect gentleman but for the look in his eyes which tells her that this is only the start, that he will not always ask so sweetly and that he expects no lesser challenge from her. She holds him tightly, so tightly that bruises will form, and captures his body entirely with hers, and murmurs in rapid German against his collarbone. He wonders about the sound proofing in the suite, and if he found all of Mycroft's bugs, and if, as the moment approaches, he can truly let go. Liesl moves her hands suddenly, sliding them over his back and downward, and says, "Yes?", and he says "Yes," and he feels her fingers, how does she know, and he and she and this task which is really the least of what he must accomplish are done, and yet have barely begun.


	11. Hercules at thirty thousand feet

Sherlock falls into 221B as if into a warm bath, with a sigh as all the stresses of the journey seep away. He kicks the door shut and looks around: nothing has moved since he left, and John has not been sleeping here, just popping in to see if Sherlock is back. Fine. He throws off his coat and scarf, and drops onto the sofa. John is due back from work any moment and before then there needs to be a period of composure, of settling in, of casting off intrusive memories.

The thorough shower Sherlock took after Liesl left his suite that lunchtime was somewhat negated by her appearing in the foyer as he waited for his taxi, running to him and kissing him with breathless longing. The hotel staff must have told her he was standing there, his coat collar turned up to hide the marks she left all across his throat, scowling because he was still here and he was supposed to be on his way to a plane back to London.

Liesl pounced on him and scolded him in a clichéd fashion for leaving without saying goodbye.

Sherlock said in a low voice, "But it is never goodbye between us," and she kissed him even harder, attracting plenty of attention until her manager, Rudi, tottered across the foyer clapping his hands and exclaiming, "Liesl, darling, the producer is here, right _now_, and he cannot understand why you have _abandoned_ him!" in an exaggeratedly camp tone.

Liesl released Sherlock reluctantly, her hand trailing down his arm and hip, and said, "Call me tonight."

"I won't," he said. "I'm working." He stood still, holding her gaze as if memorising her. "I will see you in Berlin." And he would send her flowers, and handwritten notes, and perhaps a small and quirky gift, between now and then.

Rudi stood pouting beside them, looking at Sherlock with suspicious eyes. The man presented as effete, but anyone managing Liesl needed iron strength. Sherlock regards him as dangerous.

"Berlin," repeated Liesl, and allowed Rudi to lead her away.

Sherlock slept on the plane, Liesl's scent once more on his skin.

Now he is home and there is no time to wash before John arrives. Will John know?

Sherlock allows his body to become limp on the sofa as if he has been there for hours. He aches in old ways. Liesl has been all over him, in him, and he has uncovered most parts of her too, and he wants nothing more than to delete it, but it is all reusable data, and so he just has to think of other things until he is back with her working again. He feels more violated than he had expected. It was the way she touched him. Useful, yes, necessary, even, but it had momentarily made him real instead of false, and Sherlock wants to avoid that. Only designated people see his real self, at specific times permitted by him, and even then it is uncomfortable.

With John it is also exciting, daring, a huge vulnerability like standing in the hold of a Hercules at thirty thousand feet with the cargo door open. With John those final moments would be thrillingly dangerous and yet, in his hands, also warm and safe.

Will John know about Liesl?

Sherlock had known about Mary. When she and John first slept together it was obvious in the way John walked, muscles totally relaxed, eyes still, eyelids heavy with remembered passion. Even his skin looked different. Looked _used_. Slackness caused by the rush of supposedly beneficial chemicals.

Sherlock does not feel slack. He feels tense. That is not how sex is meant to work, but what he did with Liesl was not sex, was just... activity.

Yes, activity involving all sexual parts of their bodies. Why is he trying to lie to himself?

Because he feels guilty. Not about the work, but about the real him, the moment of exposure which he cannot avoid showing her if this is to be at all convincing.

Those moments are not for her.

John does not care. John does not know. Would he care if he did know? He might. John has theoretically forfeited all right to be upset if he were going to be, because of Mary. Sherlock was not upset about the sex, as such. Maybe a little. OK, he was upset by it. John's real moments, given away so freely. Wrong. But Sherlock can accept that. He could not accept the marriage thing though. The love thing. And Sherlock does not love Liesl. So there is nothing to feel guilty about.

He lies with his eyes closed, listening for John's key in the door.

John arrives home. Sherlock opens his eyes and looks at him. John stands in the middle of the room, saying the things he always says when he gets home, dull things, soothingly boring things which Sherlock can ignore and instead focus on John's voice, light and gentle, and John himself, standing with his calm, practical hands holding the collar of the coat he has just taken off, ready to throw it on the chair on top of Sherlock's. John looks at Sherlock and smiles. Sherlock breathes in and out and wills John to come over and kiss him on the lips, one touch, one warm contact, one moment of connection to wipe away all the things Sherlock has had to do, and all the things which John is doing voluntarily.

He lies and looks up at John, and John gazes back with a soft smile, but he does not come near, and after a few moments he puts down his coat and goes to put the kettle on.

Sherlock shuts his eyes. He sees the Hercules again, and is ready to jump, to fly, but now the cargo doors are closed.

He breathes, the formation he uses to reset his mind, and begins to think about Liesl, the pattern of connections which surrounds her, and how he will unpick it and prevent a terrible thing and create a better one in its place. When he looks up again John has gone.

* * *

Liesl is in Barcelona, in May, for a lingerie shoot which has Liesl's minders in uber-paranoid mode and Liesl in permanent fury at their limitations on her movements on and off set.

Sherlock is with her. He has not discussed it with her, but merely asks where she is, she tells him, and now wherever she is staying, he appears there too. They share a suite. Sherlock stares down Rudi on this point, overriding demands that Liesl needs rest, needs privacy, needs to be alone. Sherlock turned to Liesl and asked, "Do you need those things?" and she said, "Not at the moment," and Sherlock shut the door in Rudi's face. Liesl put her hands over her mouth and laughed, horrified and delighted.

They have sex, a lot of it. Sherlock has never been so exhausted. Yet still he gets up while she sleeps and paces the balcony and smokes.

Liesl likes adventurous sex, which is on balance good. He abhors boredom. She likes to be tied up and to wear themed outfits and to play games involving teasing and punishment. She likes every part of her to be penetrated and again this is good. He dislikes the bondage games where he is restrained. She does not believe in safe words and he does not trust her to obey one if they had one.

She enjoys true control of him and he dislikes this intensely.

It is the subject of their first argument. They are at the Barcelona hotel, in their balcony suite overlooking the beach, and he complains about her need for control. She screams and throws shoes at him and accuses him of weakness and fear and not loving her.

He throws things back, firing cups around her with effortless accuracy to create a pattern of damage on the wall behind her. He yells and calls her shallow and uncaring and accuses her of sleeping with the producer and implies that the producer's wife would be pretty amenable to some revenge sex if that is how Liesl is going to play this.

They shriek at each other and the hotel manager knocks and they both shout at him to get lost. It is the middle of the afternoon and the entire crew is in the hotel.

Then Sherlock stalks off and stands out on the balcony smoking, and she comes out and takes the cigarette from him without asking, and then he takes her hand and she gasps and he clutches her, the cigarette dropping over the side, and he takes her there on the balcony in full view of the beach, gripping her hands painfully, and he makes her scream and afterwards she laughs and kisses him breathlessly and they leave a huge tip for the staff and replace the crockery and spend the rest of the week having sex in every place they pause for a moment, but Sherlock is never the one tied up and when the producer's wife sends him flowers and her phone number he gives the number to Liesl and she dials and says very nasty things and Sherlock laughs and unzips Liesl's dress and puts his hand down between her buttocks and she has not even finished her phone call.


	12. Haunted

Mary snuggles with John on their sofa and wonders if they should start a family. John feels strangely detached about it. He wasn't before. He loved the idea of Mary pregnant, radiant, then a baby, a tiny boy or girl who would grow and toddle and laugh and run about and get scraped knees and call him daddy.

They can kick a ball about. Boy or girl, every kid needs to kick a ball about. They can go for walks in the woods. He has imagined taking the child to visit Sherlock, and Sherlock showing him or her the fingers in the fridge, and the way a child would accept that and be fascinated, would look up at Sherlock with big eyes and ask questions an adult (except Sherlock) would never think of, and how Sherlock would be pleased but would pretend not to be. How he would ruffle the child's hair and teach them long words and correct them endlessly and be strict and unyielding and unexpected and basically the kid's favourite uncle in all the world.

But now Sherlock is not around and John has forgotten who the other half of the parenthood dream is meant to be for.

"We should wait till things are a bit more settled," says John.

"When are you going to get Sherlock over for dinner?" Mary asks after a brief pause. "I thought he'd be round all the time or we'd be round there. -He's in London at the moment."

Is he? John was not aware of that. "He's very busy," John says.

She holds up her phone showing a shot of Sherlock on the front page of an Italian newspaper, and English translation Photoshopped over the top:_Holmes Catches Colosseum Killer_. "Clearly," she says, and the baby conversation is more than over.

She ponders for a moment, her cheek dimpling as she scrutinises the Italian Sherlock headline.

"I'll text him anyway," she says. She takes John's phone and copies Sherlock's number to hers. John takes his phone back feeling strange as Mary sends a chirpy invitation to Sherlock - _Hi Sherlock Come over for food, we miss you lots, haven't seen you for ages! Mary xx_

It ought to be John sending the invitation but he does not feel inclined after Sherlock's brusque message. Sherlock's terseness, even rudeness, has never put him off before. But this felt different. It felt final.

Probably John is just over-reacting. Sherlock has this girlfriend now, somehow, and she probably would not appreciate texts with kisses arriving from Sherlock's exes.

Is that what he is?

(Ex flatmate, ex friend? Those are not what he was thinking.)

His ex.

No. He and Sherlock never - They never agreed anything. -There was just this thing. But there were no promises between them.

No, he is not Sherlock's ex.

Mary is holding her phone, willing it to buzz. She is fixed on it, eyes set, fingers clawed around it. John gets a tremor, looking at her. She can be so intense at times, so driven. When it is directed at him, at tearing his trousers off, that is OK, well, good. But at other times he sense what she must be like at work, a stop-at-nothing kind of organiser, a fearsome manager, someone who does not accept compromise. He is pleased that she is a strong person. He could not stand some weak and watery girl. But - But just a minute ago she was talking about babies.

Sherlock has not replied. John feels vindicated. Not just him, then.

John is not Sherlock's ex. (His mind whispers, No, because to be someone's ex you need to have broken it off...)

Mary's phone buzzes. John grunts in surprise. but she is scowling at the reply. She is about to speak and then the phone buzzes a second time. After reading this message, she gets up from the sofa and flounces away into the bedroom, flinging the phone across the sofa.

John leans over to see the message.

_I have a prior engagement. SH_

Then the second one.

_I will always have a prior engagement. SH_

John does not touch Mary's phone - even spouses need their privacy after all - but stares at it before moving warily away. He sits back for a moment, willing his leg to come to life, then heaves himself upright.

Of course, you are also someone's ex if they break it off with you.

"I'm going in the shower," he calls to Mary, heading for the sanctuary of the bathroom, but she is Facebooking with her online friends and there is no reply.

* * *

John is started to feel haunted by Liesl Messernacht. Her picture is everywhere - enormous on hoardings, glittering on the signs at Picadilly Circus, at bus stops and on the displays as you go up the Tube escalataors - and she is gorgeous. Her face alone is enough to stop John in his tracks, but when the body is added in, the whole package is breathtaking.

She sticks to the tasteful though: a bit of cleavage, hint of thigh, close fitting dresses but not short ones, and no centrefold work.

When she does a lingerie campaign, the press go wild.

Then John has to look into her daring eyes as he waits for the Tube to work, and beyond the eyes are acres of creamy flesh, immaculately groomed of course - nothing to suggest whether she is a natural blonde or otherwise - and the knickers are tasteful but from the angles of the photographs you just cannot see if they are knickers or, possibly, a thong...

This is the person Sherlock is taking into bed every night.

He assumes every night. Of course he does not know about their living arrangements. He knows Sherlock was in Paris with her for that shoot. He knows they travel around a lot and are often snapped in hotels or at airports. Sherlock seems to be living with her, basically, and if he is living with her wherever she is, then he is sleeping with her wherever she is.

Mary buys the magazines that John would be terrified to pick up in the newsagents. She brings them home and wades through soap opera 'news' and lurid true life horrors and finally turns the page to the invasive celebrity gossip pages, which suggest in no uncertain terms that Miss Messernacht is a wildcat in bed.

Previous boyfriends, who would not be named for fear of lawsuits, have suggested that they could not keep up with her. That she was too much for them.

John should not read this rubbish.

This is invasive. This woman deserves some privacy, although she certainly does not seem to seek it out.

There are reports of Liesl having sex on a hotel balcony in Barcelona. Details of her room service orders afterwards - cigarettes, fresh coffee, bizarrely, a dozen china cups. The press have somehow accessed her hotel bills.

This is what the Leveson enquiry was for.

But John cannot tear his eyes away. The idea of her, so gorgeous and also wild in bed, disturbs him deeply.

He imagines that if anyone could keep up with her, it would be Sherlock.

Sherlock would be unstoppable in bed with her, obviously, just look at him, his energy, his endless thirst for data, his dark intensity, his hunger.

His eyes, his strong hands, his quirked mouth as John appeared in the flat after work.

His kisses.

Mary comes into the kitchen to find John with his hands pressed over his eyes and the celeb rag tossed on the floor under the table.

John remembers.


	13. Sweet and piercing

John remembers:

December. In the weeks that follow their kiss, John and Sherlock have not mentioned it again. Everything ought to be the same as it was before. But it not. It is completely different and John has no idea what to do with it.

They have slipped into a routine, a peculiar but pleasant routine which has no name and is never referred to but which exists on some other level from the rest of their life together.

John will arrive home from work at a more or less known time, and dump his coat on his chair and look towards the sofa. If Sherlock is lying on it, thinking - and increasingly he is, not every day, but almost every day when John gets home - then John smiles, goes over to him, and says something extremely mundane. _The weather's on the turn. I might defrost the freezer. Delays on the Charing Cross line again._

It has become a standing joke that if John gets as far as mentioning football, Sherlock will crack.

So John knows that if he remarks, for example, that Liverpool are not playing Gerrard in the derby tonight because he's out with a metatarsal injury -

Then Sherlock will snap out his left hand and grip John's forearm and yank him down to Sherlock's level so that Sherlock can hiss, "Unnecessary data!" and then John's eyes are level with Sherlock's and if the light is right, which often it is in the evenings, then the sky reflects into Sherlock's eyes and makes them a more brilliant blue than John can look into without wanting to kiss him. And sometimes John smiles and shrugs off the hard fingers around his arm and leans over and just touches his mouth to Sherlock's. Then Sherlock's eyelashes flicker and perhaps his eyes will widen as if to let in more of the view of John. John might see his breathing pick up and his lips part a little, as if he is about to speak.

John will look at him, enjoying the sensation of his own increased heart rate and his body's call for preparatory oxygen, and marvel at how so much beauty can materialise in a man who presents himself as arrogant and difficult at best and unpleasantly selfish the rest of the time.

It is as if Sherlock sheds a veil. It floats away, a silken cloth which has shielded his true face from view, and lies on the carpet between them for a few moments. John sees his eyes, naked and vulnerable, and he has no idea why Sherlock wants to show this to him, of all people, or why Sherlock has begun inviting John, wordlessly, to touch him, or why any of it, but whatever the reason it is impossible to resist, even to begin to rationalise resistance.

John does not make the attempt. He does what he does with most things initiated by Sherlock: he goes with it.

* * *

John remembers: Christmas. There are fewer cases and more time around the flat and a sense that this is time out of the ordinary. Greg comes round for drinks and John is head of conviviality while Sherlock takes charge of the light sulking and sarcastic violin playing because of boredom and lack of work. Greg takes the mickey and Sherlock dissects his love life and John shuts Sherlock up with a look and Greg clinks glasses with both of them and toasts to something he can't seem to find the right phrase for. And when Greg has gone home Sherlock plays John a short piece John does not know but which is beautiful, sweet and piercing, and then pats John's shoulder and goes off to bed leaving John to finish his brandy alone and wonder what this is, developing here in this flat, their home, between him and Sherlock.

It has not gone as far as sex, although the definition of that was a little blurred in John's book to begin with and is now completely smeared across pages and pages of the dictionary, and includes activities such as Sherlock straightening John's tie, Sherlock reading out a court summary from the paper in a low clear voice as John is across the other side of the room trying to watch the telly, Sherlock lining up petri dishes in a certain way on the kitchen table, his fingers stretching around the circumference of each in turn, and definitely covers Sherlock laying his fingers on the back of John's neck as he walks past, saying, "Electrical impulses transmit data from the skin to the brain at over two hundred miles an hour."

It is peculiar to feel so turned on by so little. It is like being permanently fourteen, when the merest hint relating to 'it' was enough to set John off.

He admits that even if it leaves him in some pretty severe physical need a lot of the time, he likes it.

* * *

John remembers: January

Sherlock seeks him out. This never happened before. Sherlock turns up some evenings at John's workplace as he is due to leave, and walks home with him, or more usually, to the scene of some unsolved mystery from years previously, and they scramble about on waste ground trying to piece together the chain of long lost events.

Once he appeared and just said, "You can't wear that jumper," and made John take it off and dump it back inside the surgery before calling a cab to attend a lecture on innovations in the industrial uses of DNA at the Royal Academy. The lecture was good, actually - pitched only just above what John could simply listen to, meaning he had to properly concentrate, and it was pleasant to exercise his brain in an area of human science outside his usual remit, and afterwards he said to Sherlock, "Thanks for that," and Sherlock launched into a detailed dissection of the points where he felt the speaker could have given a great deal more information, and John just stood in the bar sipping his pint and admiring Sherlock and thinking, _this would probably be Sherlock's idea of a date. And for the right person, it wouldn't be bad._

And the cases continue, and Sherlock is even more energised than usual, and drinks coffee as if the bean is becoming extinct, which apparently it is in market terms, and John adds his opinions in a minor capacity, and life is good. There is no talk of their relationship, or indeed of anything pertaining to what the hell is going on between them. It is kind of a friends-with-benefits situation, John thinks, except that the benefits are available in a limited way and never spoken of.

He does not want to raise the subject - does not know how. In what terms could he possibly initiate that conversation, with Sherlock utterly still and silent about it? Sherlock never even hugs John, gives no explicit hint of affection whatsoever, just this ... touching. Sexual touching, yes. But just that. John feels he is part of some curious impulse which Sherlock is following. Perhaps John is helping Sherlock to understand something about himself. That is fine. John is comfortable with who he is and who he finds attractive, there is no bother about the fact that it is his male flatmate trying all this; less bother indeed than if a female flatmate had suddenly started this odd non-seduction. But nothing has been said. Things just continue and evolve at this very light, restrained level, and John will not be the one to push things, is fairly sure that pushing things is not what Sherlock wants. He figures Sherlock will tell him about it, say something, anything, when he wants to.

The only downside is that all the flirting, the teasing, if that is what it is, is going nowhere, and for once it would be nice to spend an evening with someone who simply jumps him and gets down to some straightforward, non-nuanced, conventional action. Maybe with a bit of adoration thrown in.

And it was at about that thought that Mary walked into Baker Street with her stalking case.


	14. Shock and awe

It is June, and Sherlock is being ushered into the garden of the Diogenes.

His brother is sitting at a small table under an umbrella. He appears incongruous with his deep grey suit and briefcase, a jug of water on the table, mint leaves tumbling among the lumps of ice, his only concession to high summer. That and the lower wool weight of his suit fabric, Sherlock noted.

The brothers are alone in the garden: stone flags under their shoes, a lawn before them, and trees inside the high walls which shield this spot from the street. All the same, they converse in low voices.

"You look ... populist," Mycroft observes. His signature sneer.

Sherlock is wearing pale chinos, a white shirt striped finely with sky blue, and has sunglasses hooked inside his open collar. In his hand is his panama. "Eight hours ago I was on a Sunseeker at St Tropez," he says.

"And no time to change." Mycroft gives a mouth only smile. "How it must chafe you."

"This helps prevent recognition." Sherlock places the hat on the table and pours himself cool water.

"Yes... You have been attracting a great deal of press attention." Mycroft picks a stack of newspapers from his briefcase. "Almost as much as your paramour herself." He lifts the corner of one page as if it might contaminate him. "A balcony, Sherlock. Where is your discretion, one might say, your dignity?"

"It fit the moment," says Sherlock carelessly. "And we were on the balcony." He gestures dismissively. "I have no news for you. Is the mission to continue?"

"Yes." Mycroft lets drop the tabloid page. "Your updates are reassuring even when they contain little. It shows the group is not yet on the move."

"They are trying to choose their opportunity." Sherlock has come to this conclusion after many seeming near-misses with his surveillance efforts. He has concluded that it is not his presence which is delaying the group, but their inability to decide upon a worthy target.

He toys with his cigarette lighter. "I can give them a suitable opportunity if you want."

"No! You are to observe and report, not to influence. Clear?"

"Dull."

"Tell me you understand." Mycroft reaches for the lighter but Sherlock snaps it away beyond his reach.

"I understand." Sherlock puts down the lighter, and picks up his drink. There is a tiny chink of sound as his ring strikes the glass.

"She is directly involved," Mycroft asks after a pause.

"She is their financier, but also their artistic designer." Mycroft's eyebrows lift. "Their shock and awe administrator, if you will," says Sherlock. "She will choose the target. And it will be based on her assessment of the political impact and the visual impact - she is very aware of how news plays out. I think she actually wants to be there on the spot, filming it all. I am on the lookout for key locations in her filming schedule - iconic buildings and the like. "

"Proof," says Mycroft.

"Only my recordings of her conversations with Rudi. You have those already." It has been difficult to make them, even harder to send them. The impossible phone has been in play again, taped to the underside of a rainy cafe awning where Liesl and Rudi had a briefing in Paris. Sherlock almost got arrested retrieving it afterwards.

Mycroft passes the newspapers across the table. Sherlock looks at them but does not touch them. He drinks the water, watching Mycroft. Compared to living with Liesl, his Boyfriend face always in view, this is relaxing.

Mycroft taps the papers and takes a deep breath. A classic tell: new topic, probably to do with sex.

Mycroft says, "I applaud your thoroughness in paying the girls to reveal your historical prowess but don't you think it is a little risky? Their lies may be discovered."

Sherlock looks at the spread of tabloid pages. The latest kiss and tell is so young that she would have been in school at the time; she has his age and the timeframe of their supposed liaison completely wrong. "I didn't pay anybody," he says.

Gratifyingly, Mycroft is surprised. "They are volunteering?"

"They are fantasizing." Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Did it really seem likely that I would hire people to expose my apparent past liaisons?"

"I see. I did think your choices of supposed former partner a little incongruous. Page three model. Not really your type."

"No." Female, stupid, attention-seeking. Certainly not his type.

"You have not denied the stories," Mycroft states.

"No. Why bother? And it confirms my status as a red blooded male." He sneers.

"What does Liesl say?"

They refer to her familiarly. It is odd but Sherlock supposes it is because she is supposed to be family, of a sort. Soon the relationship will progress to meeting significant relatives, although Mycroft is all Sherlock has and Liesl has none. Until then, this first name reference. And Messernacht is such a mouthful of a name.

Sherlock says, "She was angry, threw the paper at me, and I denied everything. Then she was even angrier and accused me of lying. Then I pointed out the trashiness of these women and how I would never sleep with anyone stupid enough to ever reveal the fact and then she was charmingly apologetic and then, at her insistence, we had make up sex."

"You had - what?" Mycroft's face is pink, from the sun, perhaps.

"Make up sex. It's where you have sex in order to, or because you have managed to, make up with someone after a disagreement." Sherlock wants to guffaw at Mycroft's discomfort but maintains a brusque matter of factness. _Intercourse_, he thinks. _Yes thank you, I can, as you once put it, manage that. And how you hate that I can._

"I see." Mycroft looks repulsed.

"It is Liesl's primary mode, actually," Sherlock says. "Her relationships centre around her unreasonable demands, followed by her reliance on her ability to persuade anyone of anything using sex."

"So," Mycroft says, "pretty much the same as your own plan for managing her?"

"Yes. We are astonishingly well matched." He looks calmly at Mycroft.

Mycroft narrows his eyes in suspicion, but says nothing. He seems wrong-footed by Sherlock's casual acknowledgement of events which would have mortified him six months previously.

_God, _ thinks Sherlock, noticing this,_I should have done this years ago._


	15. A kind of adultery

"I think we should see a counsellor," says Mary. They have been married less than two months.

"Why," John says carefully. This is not how he planned their Sunday evening dinner date. The place is right – pub next to the canal, carvery, beer garden if it was sunny (it is not and they are sitting inside between a raucous family birthday party and the condiments table), a covers band playing later on. The time is right: John has had a difficult week at work. He thinks general practice is all wrong for him. People's problems, although important, do not hold his attention. Sherlock was right: John needs thrills. He has been thinking about a move to a hospital environment – the trauma ward. Dinner out would be a good moment to mention this to Mary, see what she thinks about a move to shift work.

However he never factored in a discussion which began with needing to involve some outside person in his marriage.

Mary is burning bright tonight, he sees. She has had a hard time at work lately, too – a ton on her plate, the partners leaning on her over an important case, lots of long hours and lots of texts adjusting her expected arrival time back at the Islington flat. John can see the tension thrumming through her, making her hands clench, her lips press together, her eyes wider than normal. Classic signs of stress. He needs to ease off, let her say her piece. Clearly she has something on her mind.

He lays down his fork, gives her his full attention.

"You don't enjoy sex," Mary says bluntly. She takes a bite of cauliflower cheese off her fork and chews, watching him.

"What? But I always -" Stop, John. Stop with the specifics and keep it at the level she set. It is Sunday night and you are in the pub with a plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding smothered in gravy and horseradish and do not let her send you off the deep end with a provocative statement. "I do. So do you."

"You know what I mean."

Why do people do that? How can anyone know what another person means at any given moment? God, this is the kind of crap he really dislikes about relationships. "No. I don't." He chews Yorkshire pudding but it tastes doughy, a lump in his mouth. "Tell me what you mean."

"You're distant. You never initiate sex. It's always me. You always seem to be..."

She hesitates. Whatever she's about to say could be a deal breaker.

He remains still. He can feel anger rising inside him. Why is she doing this? Why is she starting a fight they do not need to have about a thing which is fine, which is no different from the sex lives of other couples, in which there are peaks and troughs of interest, periods where you rip each other's clothes off at every opportunity, periods where you're too tired tonight, periods where stress or worry or unhappiness mean that sex is not top priority. It doesn't have to mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. So what is this next accusation?

"You seem to be thinking about something else," she says.

She has saved herself by not saying, _someone_.

Only just.

"Do you think a counsellor would fix those things you're saying I do?" John asks. He does not answer her question, will not dignify it with a response. She said it to challenge him, to get a rise out of him – why? Why is she inviting a fight, with him, not a good idea, not on top of everything he has to deal with.

"Don't be angry. I'm just trying to fix this before it becomes a big problem." She make a reasonable face, her manager face, and puts her hand over his as if soothing him, but the bitterness is leaking out of her all over the food and her mouth looks sour.

"I'm not angry," John says, "and I am not thinking about anything else. I'm thinking about you."

The lies. He is going to hell. But he knew that anyway.

* * *

John lies in bed, alone, again. He is not asleep. He is thinking.

John likes a lot of things in bed. He is a human male, ergo, he likes bed full stop. Sex and plenty of it, yes please and thank you very much.

Adventurous? Maybe. You don't reach his age without having tried most things most ways. He had a somewhat busy youth, especially during training in Germany. Those days. Crazy but fun. Those girls!

Some boys too. Well, two, back then. The first, brilliant fun, the second the result of the first and horrid enough to confirm that girls were going to be first choice most of the time.

But you have to try everything at least once don't you.

And as for sex with Mary – Yeah, maybe not too wild, but always available. When they first met it was unbelievably frequent, as if just arriving in his flat was enough to set her off. She would more or less floor him with a hug, and if John had not been worried about Sherlock walking in, silent and appalled, they would never have made it to John's room. It was heady, to be so desired.

Since the wedding things cooled a little, as was to be expected. That's normal. John does not have a wide range of experience of anything long term, but professionally he knows that this is normal. Nothing to worry about.

It might be considered worrying that he does not really miss it. But he is under a lot of pressure at the moment. From his boring job. Boredom is stressful too. And of course marriage, a new place to live, there has been this big change in his life and change is stressful. And one of the first things to crumble from stress in the sex drive.

He does sort of miss sex, of course. Feels the urge. But that's just tough.

Not all urges have to be acted upon. You can go for ages, feeling a thing, and never act on it. (Wintertime last year). Despite what the popular press might say, it is actually possible to want sex and not have any. Millions of people do it all the time.

Some people do it their whole life. There are people who – presumably – have a libido, but who never act on it, choosing some other focus for their energies. Nuns. Monks. They've got God. The kind of business person who ends up with his name in neon at the top of a tower. Anyone on a mission. Too busy for sex, too dedicated for sex, and it doesn't kill them, they get along quite nicely.

Of course, if that kind of person ever did decide to touch you, it would be electric, years of asceticism compressing all the need they ever felt into a moment where their fingers touched the back of your neck for a second, a square centimetre of skin to skin contact, a tiny drag as the contact is removed, but time for the message to be received, your brain to learn everything it could know about their desire, longing, self restraint and the peculiar, miraculous decision to change their mind and _feel_.

John opens his eyes.

The ceiling. Artex. Sharp stippling. A beige ceiling in a rented flat. Yes, here he is under this ceiling, in his -Mary's - bedroom, thinking about nothing.

Mary is on the sofa.

Nobody is here, and nobody can hear your thoughts or see your memories.

John knows that this is a kind of adultery, though.

Mary's dark hair. Her – not eyes – her- skin. Her delicate hands.

Pale skin. In the dark, moonlight glinting off the sea and onto almost white skin, white despite the sun of the day.

Better.

Dark hair, almost black. Thick, soft hair curling onto the nape of the neck, artfully cut and styled even though it is meant to look as if no care is ever taken but John knows better. The ends of each curl touching the skin, resting on it gently, a luxurious nestling between neck and collar. The collar is already undone two buttons, and John closes his eyes and undoes two more, breathing against the smooth warm neck, and puts his lips to the hollow he has exposed, while his hands slip under the jacket and onto the perfect narrow hips.

There would be gasps, a look of utter surprise (not horror) and then the longest kiss, and then permission, a sweet outbreath of _Yes, please, now, yes,_ and then the undoing of belts, and then collapse.


	16. Diamond

Rudi the manager is the link to the main terrorist group. This was always obvious, although proof cannot be found of Liesl's money moving through Rudi to the group, or indeed, anywhere but her own accounts and those of the charities she espouses. Sherlock has made faint but clear recordings of many of Liesl and Rudi's conversations, their daily manager-star chats, and there is a code, which he deciphered and passed to Mycroft at their last meeting. No sign of a target yet. The waiting is killing him.

Then, one day in early July, Rudi walks into Liesl and Sherlock's bedroom in the chateau in the Languedoc, at half past midnight. This is not wholly surprising: Rudi has carte blanche to interrupt any activity and Liesl always obeys.

Sherlock and Liesl are not actually in the act, but another minute and Liesl would have witnessed a demonstration of Sherlock's pure wrath and accurate right hook. Rudi simply strides in without knocking and says, looking sideways at the window, "Liesl, we need to talk right now," and perhaps it is the darkness or the intimate situation but he almost forgets his camp act and sounds merely threatening.

Liesl sits up, naked and puts on a wrap.

She puts a hand on Sherlock's chest as he makes to rise and says "No, mein Schatz, my treasure, it is some work crisis, stay." Then she climbs out of bed and goes into their lounge. Sherlock puts on his dressing gown but by the time he opens the door the lounge is empty and they could have gone anywhere in a building made of three hundred years and at least as many private corners.

She is gone for forty minutes and then appears back, agitated, the smell of coffee and cigarettes all over her.

She gets into bed and then out again.

"What's wrong?" Sherlock asks. It is easy to sound concerned. The group is plotting and he has missed it.

"Work," she says.

"At one in the morning."

"A stupid contract thing. A legal problem."

She glances at Sherlock. Her eyes, the colour of sea glass, become wide and hopeful. "My passport," she says. "Perhaps - you know how I have never asked - perhaps your brother could help."

That is interesting. "What's the problem?"

"It is because I do not have a British passport. It is making things awkward. We wish to film in certain locations and the authorities are unhappy that some of us do not have British passports." She pouts, trying for cute but succeeding only in very angry.

Oh really.

Sherlock is unaware of needing a British passport for filming something. "Where are you working? Why is a German passport unacceptable?"

She gazes at him for what seems a long time. Sherlock's heart beats quickly although he tries to hide it, to mask it with mere lover-ly concern. Whatever it is must be central to their plan. Have they found a target? "It's complicated," says Liesl. "Forget it. It is not important and we will find ways to work round it."

She sighs. "I cannot sleep now. I am going to go and learn my lines for this next scene. It is in French, and you know how I find French so difficult." Utter nonsense. She speaks five languages to near fluency. Sherlock has often envied Liesl her European education.

"I will come and work with you," says Sherlock. "I have a case or two to look over. I will keep you company." Keep an eye on her.

She smiles fondly and places her hand on his cheek. "Thank you. You are so sweet."

"No one has ever called me that before," he says.

"I love you," she says, shedding the appearance of stress as he watches. Her face clears, her shoulders soften, her lips part slightly. She seems wholly focused on him, on this moment. She really can act. "Do you love me?"

"How can you doubt it?" He holds her had against his cheek. He needs to shave. Hates being unshaven, especially with her, it seems far too informal and intimate.

"Because you never say so." She rasps his stubble and he stays still, with an effort not flinching away.

She is correct, of course. He has always striven to remain in character: he is playing himself. And he would never make such trivial statements. "You know my opinion on declarations."

"I want to hear it though." She puts her hand around his back, places her fingers at the base of his spine, slides them up and down, a little pressure. She knows he enjoys that, and more. Sometimes he thinks that she is even more manipulative than he is. And now she is insisting on this thing.

"I have never loved anyone as I love you," he tells her. A perfect truth.

"Have you been in love before?" She has never asked him this. Something has happened, with Rudi, some development has made her introspective. What?

"Of course."

Liesl's eyes slant. "Who with? Was she beautiful, more beautiful than me?"

Sherlock laughs. Where is their target? She must be desperate to have invoked Mycroft's name. He must discover it. "Nothing like you. And if there was anyone in my past I could compare to you, do you really think I would be stupid enough to tell you so?"

"There were lots of women," she accuses.

He smiles. "That part about being stupid. I am not stupid."

"No, you're not."

Does she suspect him? There is an odd note to her voice. He scans her face again and again but sees only love.

"You know you can tell me anything," he suggests, placing his hand gently on her waist. "I will do anything I can to help. I hate to see you upset."

She sighs, strokes his fingers longingly. "You told me at the start that you do not believe in compromise in relationships," she says. "But you gave up your work for me, you go wherever I go, you are always beside me, holding my hand, sleeping beside me in my bed. I have never - I am -" She stops. "I love you," she repeats. The seaglass eyes glisten."You must never forget that I love you and I always will." She rises and turns to the lounge, saying dismissively, "Now I must work."

Interesting. And a giant, unmissable, irresistible opportunity.

* * *

He invites her to London, ostensibly to meet his brother, actually to see if she will accept and because he himself needs access to Mycroft and the machinery of power.

She accepts. There is a gap in her schedule. It will be but a flying visit, however.

Sherlock chooses the hotel too, and again she does not object. She is watching him, wanting to see what happens next. That is good. He installs them, at still only eleven o'clock in the morning, in the pleasantest suite of the new hotel in The Shard. She has never stayed here before, and he personally would choose the Ritz, but she likes to see the stars crammed in on their gold plate by the door, and five is simply inadequate these days.

There is coffee in their lounge, fresh fruit, and a breathtaking view of London from a wall made entirely of glass. They will not be overlooked, however, not on floor fifty-two. Sherlock and Liesl relax after their flight, in chairs either side of a rug too white and fluffy to exist in any home without staff.

"You want UK citizenship," Sherlock says. "I am making a deduction that you need it, in fact."

He stares at her. Her eyes reflect back what is shone into them, in this case, light from the many ornate lamps, and an oblique angle of the London skyline. She smiles slowly, and maintains eye contact. She uses her eyes to dominate people, even as he does.

"I don't need it," she says. "But it would be very useful."

She ends on an upwards inflection. A question.

He pushes an envelope of heavy white paper across the side table to her. She picks it up and looks inside.

"Marry me," says Sherlock as Liesl takes out the single diamond and balances it on her palm.

He does not plead. Does not even make it a real question. It is a proposal in the baldest sense of the term, a suggestion and very nearly an instruction.

She blinks and immediately breaks eye contact, her fingers closing around the gem. She sends her gaze all over the room as she considers this.

She does not ask him if he is serious, because when they talk like this, he is always serious.

She gets up and walks around the room, her cream silk skirt rustling against her shapely calves. Her high heels dig into the thick rug, crushing the pile.

Sherlock lies back in his chair and watches her. He does not repeat the suggestion nor add to it.

Liesl turns back to him. "I will not change my name and I will retain my own separate finances," she says.

"Excellent," says Sherlock. He picks up the telephone on the side table and punches their concierge's number. He allows a small smile at his future wife as he says briskly into the phone, "The champagne and flowers I ordered. Now."

He drops the phone back on its hook and stands.

"We should celebrate," he says. He holds out his hands to her.

She comes into his arms like a punch to the gut. He catches her and kisses her with hard possessiveness. For once she is compliant and soft, barely fighting for control, and after a moment's calculation Sherlock relaxes too and they kiss like two people newly betrothed in the largest suite in London's most exclusive hotel, and as they will kiss later, at the press conference, for the cameras.


	17. Half struck coin

John unlocks their front door and goes in, calling for Mrs Hudson. She is not here.

He climbs the stairs to his and Sherlock's flat and stands in the living room. He has not been here for a while. It is the same. Not that much time has passed since he lived here, after all.

He looks in the kitchen. There are cups on the drainer. Sherlock has been back, then. But is not expecting to return soon - he has washed the cups in a rare burst of fastidiousness. Mould is only acceptable under the terms of an experiment.

John puts the kettle on - might as well stay for a brew now he's made the journey - and puts the cups away while it boils.

He is here for two reasons, three if you count making sure the flat and Mrs Hudson are OK.

But his main reason for being here is to start his new project, the thing which is helping him remain sanguine even as his home life deteriorates around him.

He has determined to restore his friendship with Sherlock. Things will necessarily be different from before - both of them will be married, Sherlock even, it seems, in a contented relationship - but John will not allow their friendship, all those good times, just to fizzle away to nothing. He cannot go through life without Sherlock, is not prepared to go through life without Sherlock. Without Sherlock John is an unfinished coin, a blank rolling away across the floor of the mint, half-struck, without the details which tell its meaning, pointless in circulation. Even if they have to do it internationally, John will make it work, if he can. And he has a plan for how to do it.

First, though, a minor errand and the other reason for being here.

He goes past the fridge and to Sherlock's door. Knocks, just in case, then opens it. The room is empty, tidy, the bed made. The wardrobe is half empty. His things are still here, though, the odd pictures and Edwardian household gadgets he likes, standing on their shelves in the steamer trunk. John smiles a little. Sherlock's taste.

He takes the envelope out of his back jeans pocket and lays it on Sherlock's bed. It is just a card, a standard Congratulations on Your Engagement card. He would have sent it to wherever Sherlock is now, if he knew where that was. He was not going to send the message by text. And he could have rung, he supposed, but that seems wrong too. These things should be face to face, but that is not easy to organise when the other person has transformed into an international playboy.

He shuts the door behind him and goes to make tea.

As he walks back into the kitchen, Sherlock is standing there in a weird pale grey suit, and next to him, wearing a fur stole and holding his arm like something out of a Forties film, is Liesl Messernacht.

"Hello, John," says Sherlock in a completely ordinary tone, as if he last saw John earlier that day, not three months previously. "I saw you were here. Allow me to introduce my fiancée, Liesl Messernacht."

Liesl is tall, even more so in black patent high heels, and she wears large sunglasses and dazzling red lipstick.

She lets go of Sherlock and takes off the shades and John sees those eyes, the almost colourless eyes, long eyelashes, full on simmering glamour, three feet away. He can smell her strong perfume.

"This is my former flatmate, John Watson," says Sherlock conversationally.

She puts out her hand, palm down, like Marie Antoinette.

John shakes her hand. He gets the impression she expected him to kiss it. "Nice to meet you. Congratulations. I was just here dropping off a Congratulations card," he says to Sherlock.

"Thank you," says Sherlock. He is looking at John, the laser look, the Sherlock scan.

"Do you have coffee?" asks Liesl, also looking at John but turning her head to Sherlock.

"Not the kind you like," Sherlock says.

Liesl's eyes slide away from John and she moves around the flat, looking at everything and touching nothing. She acts as if she is a museum exhibit - a rather musty one which is mildly interesting but nowhere she wishes to remain. Her physical presence, in this small space, is astonishing- she is pure restrained energy, every movement precise and deliberate, exactly the motion she intended.

John knows he is staring but cannot help it.

"John," says Sherlock, and John snaps his attention back to his friend. Sherlock smiles in an apologetic way. "Don't say you've seen us today. We are incognito. Liesl was curious to see the flat, that's all."

"The press are everywhere," Liesl says, looking out of the window. "We should go." She adds something in German. John catches the word 'boring'.

Sherlock replies shortly in German, with a frown, and that gives John a jolt. Of course he can speak German. Sherlock can do anything.

Liesl gives Sherlock a look, and the two of them glare at each other for several seconds. John wants to back away, out of the room, down the stairs, far, far away. Their two personalities are so strong that seeing them clash is like waiting for the mushroom cloud.

Then Liesl smiles at Sherlock, a smile of such sensuous playfulness that John's mouth falls open of its own accord. "You are right," she says to Sherlock. "I'm sorry, Mr Watson, it is rude of me to use anything but English. I hope you are not too offended."

"Not at all," says John, as Liesl goes to Sherlock and touches his jaw with a smouldering pout. "And don't worry, lots of English people speak German. We learn it at school."

She casts him an uncertain glance at this, then immediately loses interest in whether or not John has just bitten back. But John sees Sherlock's microsecond smirk.

"I'll let you get on," says John, and Sherlock nods and draws Liesl away. "I won't mention this to anyone."

"Thank you," says Sherlock. He gives John a dark look. John tries but cannot read it. He is losing his touch. Out of practice. "Good to see you," says Sherlock, and then John knows for sure that he is acting, for Liesl's benefit. Sherlock does not do chitchat, almost does not do courtesy. But he is doing it now, pretending John is a distant acquaintance, for whatever reason.

Fine. John shakes Sherlock's outstretched hand, Sherlock's warm grip communicating total masculine confidence. Sherlock is still giving John that intense stare, and then Liesl smiles pointedly and John releases Sherlock and lets them leave.

Now he needs to boil the kettle again.

He cannot work out what game Sherlock is engaged in. He does not wish to acknowledge John as a friend right now. But John saw the smirk as John pushed back at Liesl's rudeness, and he detected no anger or coldness from Sherlock during the whole time he stood there, gazing at John with his I-am-deducing-you face. Things are not as they were before. But John feels better than he has in months. Sherlock does not hate him, at least. The coin will have its face again.

There is another thing. When Sherlock was winning his battle of wills with Liesl, John glanced at his left hand and confirmed: Sherlock is still wearing the agate ring.

* * *

"Oh my God," says John. "And I thought our wedding was a bit over the top."

"What do you mean, over the top," says Mary sharply.

He has said something wrong and not even got to the punchline yet. He sighs. "I mean, all the planning. Very tiring. Look at this. Now _that's_ going to be a wedding."

She wrinkles her nose. "Why are you reading _Hello_! magazine?"

"Isn't it yours?" asks John.

"No."

"Oh."

They both know it is his.

When she sees the wedding feature she understands why.

The ceremony will take place in a schloss in the picturesque valleys of southern Germany. Global press will be there. A winter ball - in November there will be snow - with an ice rink, ice sculptures, vodka sipped from shot glasses made of ice, and all the ice related paraphernalia the wedding planners could invent.

The bride's dress is a closely guarded secret but this does not prevent pages of speculation and many pictures of dresses she has previously worn.

The groom's outfit will almost certainly be an English tailored suit from Jermyn Street.

Actors, musicians, politicians, will all be there. The British and German prime ministers have been invited.

"Blimey, says John. "They're going to need a lot of Ferrero Rocher."

Mary scolds him and pores over the pictures of Sherlock. "He looks so happy," she says. John hears the wistfulness in her tone. Is that for them, for the sorry state of their own relationship? January to July, a rapid downward spiral of disaster. "It's such a pity we don't know him any more."

"Yes, we do," says John. "He's my friend, remember?"

She gives him a funny look.

"OK," admits John. "He hasn't been around lately. But he's got all this going on. It's hardly surprising. We haven't fallen out, he is just busy."

The more he talks, the more desperate it sounds. He doesn't care any more.

"I bet we don't get an invite," says Mary.

When it arrives, a simple printed invitation on heavy cream cardstock, she is happier than John has seen her for weeks.

* * *

John goes for a walk in his lunch hour and enjoys London in summer. The air is still full of grit – more so this year than he has ever noticed before – and the streets still smell of petrol fumes and uncollected rubbish – and the Tube is ridiculously expensive for a single journey even with an Oyster card – and the Underground commute is hell with the number of people who still apparently think it is acceptable to spend half an hour with your arm in the air having neither washed or applied deodorant – yet at moments, when he passes a black painted railing and enters a green square planted with lime trees and roses, or turns a corner and sees shafts of golden light falling down into the canyons between tall buildings, he remembers why he loves London with all its flaws and failings, and why he came back, and why he is unlikely ever to leave.

He stands today in Trafalgar Square, these days strangely devoid of the noisy traffic flowing around it, more like an Italian piazza than any London space has any right to be. He looks up at Nelson's column and around at the black lions with tourists climbing on them for their holiday snaps.

John has a case. He fetched it, with many others, from the pile of reject letters in the flat, most of them unopened but clearly from would-be clients. It is not really a Sherlock-level case. It does not catch a killer or prevent a disaster. But it is to solve a puzzle, and help someone, and that's enough for the moment. And all rests on finding if an act is possible, or if an event was simply imagined by the victim, who is going slightly mad wondering about it.

_Sherlock. If you have a minute I would really like your expertise on something. Do you know if there is a tunnel under Trafalgar Square? It's for a case. Thanks. John._

The reply comes back quite quickly. It says, _Don't text me!_

Ok, first strike out. John perches on the edge of a fountain and watches the dolphins pouring endless water into the blue tiled pool. Not to worry. He can be - is prepared to be persistent.

His phone buzzes with another message, from Unknown Number. It says, _There may be a tunnel from the old pneumatic post railway. What case? SH_

It makes sense. Sherlock meant, don't text his known number. He has switched phones or more likely, just SIMs, and can now reply.

John saves the new number in his phone as Work old number, and texts back, _Mysterious good samaritan who stopped a mugging in Trafalgar Square. Muggee wants to say thank you but the man appeared from, and vanished back into, thin air even though the square was deserted late at night. Muggee going insane._

A longer pause. John is not concerned now. He pictures Sherlock, in some plush hotel no doubt, thinking. Wearing his frown, eyes darting about as possibilities flow around him.

Who is he with? His fiancee? Who knows. But John has made him think and for that, John feels proud.

_Dull,_ comes the withering reply. _And obvious. Look properly at the old Police Station inside the ornamental lantern at the south east corner of the square. The door will have been forced. You will find the samaritan, or traces of him, there. You really should learn to observe, John. SH_

John looks. In the corner of Trafalgar Square is an odd cylindrical building, not much larger than a pillar box, but with windows and a globe-shaped lamp on its conical roof. This was once a solid pillar - John googles - topped by a lantern supposedly from Lord Nelson's warship. But then after the First World War the pillar was hollowed out to form a tiny police station. It is just large enough to hold one man. Now it is used as a storage area for the Square's cleaners.

John starts grinning, and tourists look at him strangely as he stands there, beaming at his phone.

It's been ages since Sherlock insulted him.

* * *

Mary is on the sofa and John is awake in bed. Her choice. They do not have a spare room. She says he keeps her awake with nightmares and muttering in his sleep. He is worried about what he mutters but it is afraid to ask. He offered to take the sofa but she prefers it.

It means that when she can't sleep, she can sit up and watch the box and make herself a drink and watch DVDs if she wants to. Whereas John is trapped in the bedroom, nothing more than his silent phone for company and a fear of disturbing her, angering her, if he goes out to make a cup of tea or get a book. He is inconveniencing her enough as it is without disturbing her rest.

He usually hears music when she is up late at night. Film type music, when she has a DVD on, or if it's just the radio, Classic FM.

One night he really needs a drink. He opens the door, thinking to get a glass of water from the bathroom, no need to disturb her in the living room... but then he hears a low voice. Hers.

She is on the phone to someone.

She is whispering. Moaning, would be a more accurate description. She is moaning and groaning into the phone and as he puts his eye to the crack of the living room door he sees her on the sofa with her phone held against her head, other hand under the duvet, and after listening for a minute and murmuring, "Yes, yes," she presses Redial, it rings, and she listens again.

She is ringing a sex line. Getting off on ringing a sex line.

John gets the water and sits on the edge of the bath, drinking it.

Ringing a sex line is a little disappointing, personally speaking, but not hurtful. Everyone needs a little help getting there sometimes. Toys have not featured in their sex life, though. Maybe they should have -? And now it seems that Mary's thing, the thing she has never once mentioned to John, is the sound of dirty talk.

He can do dirty talk. If she wants.

If he wants. That is the problem, really. He wants to fix it. But he cannot, now, picture what this, fixed, would look like.

He drinks the water. It tastes wrong, even though it is exactly the same water as comes from the kitchen tap. He flexes his bare toes against the cool tiled floor – never warm in this flat, even in July – and feels grim, feels horrible, about his wife, about Mary, ringing up some sleazy sex line while he is twenty feet away in bed alone.

But... you don't need to keep redialling a sex line. They maintain the connection, don't they -? Keep on taking your money.

So why is she redialling? What plays, and then comes to an end? What is the turn on?

It is not necessarily a voice saying filthy things which is getting her so worked up. It might be just ... a voice. A number with a recorded message, so she has to keep ringing.

She is having phone sex with someone's voicemail.

Who is Mary ringing? Who does she find so sexually charged that a presumably bland and inoffensive voicemail welcome message is enough to get her off?

Who could have that kind of voice? John wonders this, sitting in an unfastened dressing gown on the edge of the bath, and his brain immediately and unhelpfully suggests the answer.

_Sherlock_, it whispers. _His voice in your ear. His lips against the side of your head, your jawline, on your throat. His voice, telling you anything at all._

Oh god.

It is true.

But this is not about Sherlock.

Is it.

He has to know whose number is under her thumb.

* * *

**Author's note:** to see the strange building Sherlock identifies for John, google 'world's smallest police station, Trafalgar Square'. It's real, and rather peculiar. I used to admire it on my way to work every day! -Sef


	18. Threaded silver

Wedding plans are proceeding for the ultimate celebration of love and commitment between two people, and in the pale suite with its view of the Eiffel Tower, Sherlock recalls, as he frequently does, with varying levels of pleasure and pain, the moment he fell in love.

February. If he were to nominate a single point, rather than the accrued evidence of months and years of shared experiences and understanding, then a February night after a chase for Mary's stalker across rainy streets and a muddy building site - that February night would be it.

There is Mary, now John's girlfriend, and this gives Sherlock an old kind of pain. But it is no more serious than previous girlfriends have been, and their dates revolve entirely around when Sherlock can spare John, which is not often. The girl does not seem to mind, even encourages it. She has swapped staring at Sherlock's groin for staring at his eyes, an improvement of sorts, and instead keeps her hand pretty much permanently on John whilst watching Sherlock, and Sherlock will not give her the satisfaction of any kind of response to this. Does she think he will be embarrassed to see his friend holding hands with his girlfriend? Why? He is not embarrassed. They are having sex, fine, it is what people do. Even John. Even Sherlock, on occasion, though not with John, (not yet) and perhaps this is Mary's point.

She is annoying but no threat. She has some conversation, can be amusing when she tries, but John will soon tire of her. It is clearly the sex which is gluing them together, and chemically that does not last long. Sherlock can wait, must wait, because he has a difficult job coming up.

He could use some help from John with this job, but the moment to ask is difficult to judge.

The stalker, the ex boyfriend, went out with Mary for about six months. She says she tried to break up with him after a week, but he kept winning her round. So charming. So apologetic for his temper tantrums. And her friends all thought he was brilliant, such a gentleman, good-looking, well off too, with a good job. He would hold open doors for her and carry heavy bags and get upset if people didn't give up their seat for her. But then he would get upset if she forgot to let him open the door, or tried to carry a bag herself. He took it as an insult, a sign that she neither loved nor respected him, because she would not let him do these things for her.

It turned towards greater control when after a burglary at her flat, she changed the locks and gave him a key. "He made me feel safe," she said. "He promised no one would be allowed to hurt me. He could come round and I would be able to sleep properly."

Then things turned again, and soon he was living with her. After she forgot her door key one evening in a fit of nerves, he told her she couldn't be trusted with her own safety. He took her key and told her he could let her in and out.

"Did you tell anyone all this was going on?" John asked.

Mary shook her head, tears dropping into her lap.

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" John asked.

"I was in denial," she said, "and I was afraid of what he would do when he found out. He thought my friends hated him. They do now. He thought my mum was stupid and interfering. He was so nasty to some of my friends because they are gay that I don't think they'll ever speak to me again, because I just agreed with him, that's the worst part, I just nodded and didn't stop him because I didn't have the strength to face what he would do when we got home."

There is proof, in the the ex boyfriend's flat, of how he tracked and stalked Mary after Mary finally ran to her mother's and locked herself in and refused to see him. Pictures taken of Mary as the ex followed her home from work. Pictures taken through the windows of her mother's kitchen. Video, Mary thinks, of Mary with a male work colleague. Generally a ton of stuff which will prove that this man is obsessed with Mary and needs, at least, an injunction. Because she kept their abusive relationship such a secret there is little else to interest the police, and the ex is cunning and has alibis for the times Mary says she has seen him following her.

John goes off one afternoon without telling Sherlock, to retrieve the proof, which is obviously in digital form at the ex's flat somewhere, and Sherlock realises what he is doing and goes after him. The ex is vicious when John is caught leaving the flat, angry with John but when he sees Sherlock he goes ape, loses it completely and it escalates from a tussle on the doorstep and Get off my property to full on punching and kicking and biting, and John sees that the bloke has a knife and drags him off Sherlock and then he gets away and John takes chase while Sherlock calls Lestrade and runs after them, winded from being pummelled so unexpectedly and thoroughly.

Then John is chasing the man over a building site and - stupid! - onto a scissor lift platform. It is not raised to the maximum, but high enough. The man pushes John aside and yells at Sherlock, something vicious and provocative, something deeply personal and unpleasant about Sherlock's sexuality, and John punches him, and wrestles with him on the tiny platform. The knife is out and as Sherlock pants towards them, John grabs the man's collar with his right hand and his jacket pocket with his left and says something about Mary and sends the man towards the edge and gets the knife stuck straight into him in return.

And John is hurt up on on the scissor lift, the stalker lying down on the ground groaning, who cares, and Sherlock is clambering up to John and calling his name, "John, John, talk to me," then shrieking for Lestrade as John bleeds onto the treadplate of the scissor lift, and John himself opening his eyes thank God and saying "Sherlock," weakly, and obviously trying to get him to calm down, but he cannot calm down. Then he sees that John is trying to tell him something, something other than _Stop being a hysterical baby_, and Sherlock focuses and sees that John has something in his left hand, but cannot move his arm - already injured, now doubly - to show Sherlock.

Sherlock takes his hand and carefully uncurls John's fingers. John winces and groans and more blood pours away from him -

Sherlock sees the key in John's hand, the USB key which he plucked from the stalker's pocket just before sending him over the edge of the lift platform - and he knows that once again John has saved him and the case in one fell swoop, without needing to have anything explained. John understood everything with a single look and simply acted.

Sherlock feels a rush of relief and nausea simultaneously. The case is saved, but John is hurt, Sherlock did not reach him in time and John did not even think about that before he acted, only about the thing which had to be done. He assumed Sherlock would be behind him and he was, but not close enough to prevent injury, this horrid injury which is leaking red John all over the treadplate. Sherlock is far from squeamish but this is too much blood, John is getting pale, oh God, not an artery -

Sherlock is staunching the wound with his scarf and screaming, John is trying to speak but now cannot, and it is a disaster and finally the medics arrive and confirm that John is not in fact bleeding out, just bleeding a lot. They hook him up. Lestrade grapples Sherlock aside and Sherlock nearly punches him but luckily for Lestrade shock has made him weak and then Lestrade asks the medics to check Sherlock too because he is so wild. This at least means that ultimately Sherlock gets to go in the ambulance with John despite John being no relation, no spouse, of no more importance to Sherlock than flatmate.

Ambulances are bare, spartan places, with not as much equipment as you would expect to need to save people's lives, and John lies on the trolley and Sherlock sits beside him and holds his uninjured hand and smiles at him as best he can.

He does not want to smile at all, he wants to cry, but realises that this would not be helpful. Also much of this is probably a shock reaction, but still he feels terrible, just thinking John was going to die in front of him while the medics took their sweet time arriving, it is too much to deal with.

John is dealing with it, quite calmly, gazing at Sherlock with his _It's not as bad as Afghanistan_ face. "I know," says Sherlock, "but I didn't go to Afghanistan," and John laughs (and yelps in pain) because Sherlock has read his mind. Sherlock has the USB key, and sits shaking and unable to make the face he wants to make, and strokes John's knuckles with his thumb.

The medics are busy, constant checks and efficient driving, and anyway Sherlock has never cared what other people think as he bends over to kiss John's forehead, then presses his face into John's hair. He breathes in John, still alive John, clever, kind, beautiful, passionate John with his calm eyes and strong hands, and Sherlock knows then that he is falling over the edge, out of the Hercules and into the rushing air with the ground spread out in patterns of green fields and the threaded silver of rivers below, and Sherlock is falling down in a perfect straight drop but promises, promises, promises that he will not cry out.

He does not cry out. John never hears the three words breathed into his hair, but squeezes Sherlock's hand back when Sherlock lifts his head again, looking normal. John gazes up at him smiling faintly, and Sherlock stays beside him and makes the medics work around the hand holding, all the way to the hospital.

And that, in a reeling ambulance on a rainy night in February, with John flat out on a stretcher and the paramedics looking on disinterestedly as Sherlock inspects all the medical equipment and questions everything being done to John, and scowls and criticises and blinks away tears of relief, was it. Fixed, permanent, immutable, forever.


	19. Dimly-lit heart

The flight is short, but the check in time is early and the wait in the departure lounge is long. Modern technology handicapped by security and popularity.

John bought a paper as he waited for his cab in Islington, and started scanning it for cases, the cool early morning air refreshing after another night of misery in the lonely bedroom. He continues his search in the departure lounge.

No obvious cases. The pan-European rail project is flailing again. Many countries are wringing their metaphorical hands at what would happen if the new parts of the network remain incomplete. The sub-Alpine tunnel is the key, and there are delays, tedious and complicated delays to which the paper devotes a large part of a double spread.

John sighs, but luckily he has something good for Sherlock already up his sleeve.

Sherlock quickly realised the source of cases for John's new set-a-puzzle-for-Sherlock project, that is, the old case files at Baker Street, and told John that the rejected cases were rejected for a reason. "Get _new_ cases," he instructed.

John had called Sherlock on a whim one rainy lunchtime, a month or so after he first elicited a response from him with the missing Good Samaritan case. He was at his desk and simply picked up the phone and dialled Sherlock's new number. Seemingly also on a whim, Sherlock picked up.

"I must have fresh cases," Sherlock says during the call. "My mind needs stimulation. And update my website that we're open for business. I assume you know my password."

"No, I don't."

"Oh. Ok. I'll change it for one you do know, if you like." Sherlock sounds surprised. John can hear many murmuring voices in the background, as if Sherlock is in a crowd. It sounds like a shopping centre. Or perhaps an airport.

"Or you could update your own website," John says.

God, he has missed this, he thinks, as Sherlock's scathing response to the suggestion that it was Sherlock's website, and therefore his responsibility, washes over him. He has missed Sherlock's sarcasm, his outrage that John would even hesitate to perform a menial task which Sherlock could do but does not want to, and his impatience with all minds which do not reach a conclusion as quickly as his. It is just good to hear his voice. He sounds tired, but fighting it.

"I will update _my_ blog," John says, "because people actually read that-"

"-Hah!"

"- But be warned, you have many more fans now that you're with Liesl, and I predict that ninety percent of requests will be for photos of her naked, or you naked, or both."

"Oh for pity's sake."

"I'll put that down as a no, then," John says archly.

"Gross invasion of privacy," Sherlock mutters.

"Says the man who did it on a hotel balcony knowing that a thousand people with mobile phones were on the beach fifty yards away." John makes a face, knowing that Sherlock can detect eye rolling even down a phone line.

"Expedient," spits Sherlock.

An interesting choice of words. What little John knows of Sherlock and sex does not suggest he regards the other party as so merely functional. Sherlock can be ruthless, focused, driven - but he is not cold. He has a heart, however darkly he wraps it in sarcasm and despite. In fury he is full of passion. And - but John is not thinking about what he knows, or thought he knew, of Sherlock and lust, because that was an aberration and is in the past.

Expedient, though. Sherlock's fiancée. John never felt expedient last winter, never felt used. Of course, he was a more than willing participant in whatever that was. Perhaps, then, Liesl is too.

"You're a YouTube sensation," John says lightly.

He winces though, because Mary found that video and tried to show John, and John scraped back his chair so quickly it toppled. "Yeah, funny how I do not want to see film of my mate having sex with his girlfriend," he told her sarcastically when she glared at him. "I thought you'd like it," she replied, causing him to gape, and was that a dig at him for having admitted, however incompletely, to having a physical thing for Sherlock?

John drags his attention back to his phone call.

"My lawyers are dealing with that," says Sherlock coldly.

"I assume that means that your brother is," says John. Something tells him not to use Mycroft's name, over the phone.

"Are you going to find us cases or not?" asks Sherlock. The weariness surfaces a little: his voice lacks its usual bite.

"I'll advertise on the blog. I can't promise people that you'll have time to look at them," says John.

Sherlock huffs. "People shouldn't expect promises," he says. "Promises are mostly convenient lies given in support of imaginary social structures."

That is profound for a casual phone call. John does not have an answer, because he has instantly thought of the promises he and Mary made on their wedding day, and has now lost the thread of the conversation.

"John?"

"Yes, what, sorry."

A cough on the other end of the line. Then a reluctant sounding question, a question born of duty ... of Sherlock's mostly dormant sense of social mores-? "Is Mary all right," Sherlock asks, and it is obvious that he dislikes asking.

"Yes," says John. "Thanks."

Another pause.

"Are _you_ all right?" Sherlock asks in quite a different tone. John hears sharp anxiety, and shuts his eyes briefly against the memory of Sherlock's tears. He must not give his friend any more pain.

He makes his tone casual. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll get you some cases. And, um, if it helps, I'm owed some time off in lieu. I can pop over, go through some cases with you, if you like. If you have time, I mean."

Silence, the type that makes John imagine Sherlock standing in the middle of the living room at Baker Street with his eyes roving over John's face, discovering clues Sherlock is not certain he can process.

John waits. He prefers these memories to the ones of their parting.

"You haven't told Mary about the time off," Sherlock states at last.

John hesitates. "Not yet," he says. "-When I book it, I will. Obviously."

"Obviously," echoes Sherlock. "Although actually -"

"What?"

"It would be best not to mention that you're meeting me." Sherlock pauses, as if considering whether to continue. John pictures his eyes darting about, the visible sign of the hidden mechanisms of Sherlock's mind. "I am working on something, just something minor -"

Minor! When Sherlock's voice alone tells John that he is near flattened with fatigue. He is probably skeletal with lack of food too, and smoking, of course. It is obviously a case and nothing minor either. The lie is blatant even for Sherlock. John grunts in disbelief.

"-And it would not be good for your face to become known. And of course, the press," finishes Sherlock.

John sighs. The press: an incontrovertible reason. "Of course. I won't mention it." He does not ask about the case.

"Thank you. Liesl has a raft of press interviews in Barcelona again in September. That's a couple of weeks away if you can do that."

John's heart lifts at the faint, faint note of hope in Sherlock's tone. "I can do that."

"Good. That's settled, then."

And so John is on a six a.m. flight to Barcelona, heading for a non-existent medical seminar and, courtesy of Greg Lestrade and his phone call to the international team, a gruesome murder in the dimly-lit heart of the Barri Gotic.

* * *

_Author's note: just a quick update today I'm afraid as I am off to celebrate a birthday - 21, or perhaps a multiple thereof - by going to see Benedict, I mean, Star Trek. More soon! -Sef_


	20. Relic

The Placa Reial has a fountain in the centre, and tall palm trees dotted about, drawing the eye up from the paved floor to the grey sky above this stark, formal space.

John enters under the arch from the eastern side of Las Ramblas and sees Sherlock, standing still beside the fountain with his back to John, quite alone.

He is looking at the ground, his head bent. He is in black, a suit which John recognises, and not the kind of thing he is usually photographed wearing, these days.

As John approaches, Sherlock drops to the pavement, crouches on hands and knees, face close to the ground. It is a posture John has seen many times. It is always followed by an exposition, a Sherlock speech detailing the pieces of evidence missed by the police and the deductions arising from them which will move the case forward. These were the moments which first defined their friendship: Sherlock expounding, John marvelling, Sherlock a little bewildered that anyone would admire what he did. He liked it, though. Right from the start he seemed eager for John's praise, once he knew such a thing could exist. It touched John then to think of this brilliant man whom nobody ever thought to thank, and that has not changed. The police treated Sherlock as a machine, a tool to be used when required; they had forgotten that he was a human being, a person who could do these amazing things, and they had allowed him to forget too.

When John met him, Sherlock thought he mattered to nobody, and that nobody mattered to him.

John does not mind reminding Sherlock again and again how brilliant he is and how valuable.

"The body was found here but the murder did not take place here," Sherlock says without getting up as John comes to stand beside him. John crouches too. "Blood on the paving stones, not in between them. It had already coagulated. Fresh blood would have flowed down in between the stones." He points.

He straightens a little, still on his haunches, looks at John and grins. John sees the signs and is shocked but not surprised: gaunt face, grey complexion, dark shadows under the eyes, the eyes themselves jittery with caffeine and thought. "The body was brought here," he goes on, "from the market." He points back under the arch.

"La Boqueria," says John. "I've just walked past it. They had shrink-wrapped whole piglets on the meat counter." He could have bought a sheep's head for his tea if he wished.

Sherlock stands, grips John's hand to help him to his feet. "Leg again," he says.

"The flight," says John.

"The tedium of a desk job," says Sherlock. "This is the trail. See?"

They follow blood drips across the square and into the market.

"The police know all this," Sherlock says as they pause under the arch proclaiming Barcelona's famous covered market. "I'm just going over the ground with you."

The ground is wet with the runoff juices from the market: fish ice, fruit pieces, dropped lettuce leaves. Smells of cheese and fresh meat hang in the air. At the far end is a coffee bar which consists of a Formica counter, some high stools and a giant urn run by a scowling elderly man. The whole place is earthy and unpretentious. John likes it a lot.

They stand and drink small coffees, not from sophisticated European espresso cups, but out of polystyrene. The old gents around them smoke cigars and growl at each other from under flat caps.

"Do you know where it was done," John asks Sherlock in a low voice. It seems wrong to speak English, to be blatantly foreign in here.

Sherlock shakes his head. "We need to come back when the market is shut. Impossible to check the ground properly with all these people." He gives the shoppers and tourists an irritated glance, then nods at the old bloke behind the counter and receives another coffee.

"We should eat," says John. "Specifically, you should."

"I'm fine." Sherlock squeezes his cup until it cracks, drops it into the plastic bin bag on the floor.

"You're thinner than I've ever seen you. And you started out underweight. Eat something."

"This place doesn't sell food. And I am working."

"No, you're not," says John.

This earns him a sharp frown.

"This is a holiday," John says. "A break. Yes, you will think about this murder and solve it, I know you will. But this is for fun. Our kind of fun. This is not you working. This is not your case."

Sherlock narrows his eyes at John. "What makes you say that?"

"Sherlock, I know you. I saw you every day for three years and I know when you have a case, an all consuming case, and you have one now. But this murder is not it. So please, eat."

"Later," concedes Sherlock after a pause during which he seems to consider and reject resistance.

"Good."

They walk to the police mortuary.

En route, Sherlock's phone buzzes with text messages. He reads them, but does not reply. After five messages, his phone rings. He answers it with the words, "I'm working."

A pause and a high pitched tone on the other end of the line.

"Today is not the day," Sherlock says. "It's tomorrow. Just wait. Yes. Yes, later."

He puts his phone away.

"Liesl," says John.

"Yes." Sherlock closes his mouth firmly. Does not wish to discuss it.

The phone rings again. Sherlock answers it saying, "I told you I am working," and rings off.

"Does she just put up with that," John asks curiously.

"She is being irrational and she knows it," says Sherlock dismissively. "I have impressed upon her the paramount importance of my work."

John wants to ask more but does not dare. Sherlock has volunteered nothing about his fiancée and seems reluctant to talk about her. Or to her.

John tries to imagine what would happen if he spoke to Mary like that. Apocalypse, basically.

Sherlock glances at John with narrowed eyes, then takes his phone out again. He composes a text as he and John weaves between tourists and shoppers on the busy street. "You're right," Sherlock says to John, pressing Send. "I ought to be more ..." He stops before finishing the sentence, and puts his phone away.

John huffs through his nose. "Please. Do not take relationship advice from me." A frivolous comment, but true. Things are more wrong between him and Mary than he can bear to think about. He gets out the guidebook to cover the twinge.

The book, most of which he read on the plane, is full of pictures, tantalising views past which he is now walking. A house with umbrellas on the walls – why? He locates the police station on the pull-out map and where they are in relation to it.

"John, for pity's sake put your guidebook away. We look like tourists."

John has never been on holiday, as such, with Sherlock. He had not imagined Sherlock would suffer from the tourist's need to appear a local, and it is rather funny. "So should I not buy an _I l__ove Barca _baseball cap and carry a giant camera, then?" He puts the guidebook away.

Sherlock ignores this and talks again about the case. "This death is suspicious. At first glance it appears to have been the result of extreme self harm. But in my opinion it is murder."

"The local police think it's suicide?"

"They think it is accidental death. The British police think it is no such thing especially after I drew their attention to a few key points."

"Yes, why _are _ the British police involved? Greg never really said."

"The dead girl was British."

"Oh."

They go to the police station and meet Logan, the British detective assigned to this case. He handles the translation as the examining officer takes them to see the dead girl.

The body is in the police mortuary. John is prepared for a gruesome sight, but what meets his gaze as the sheet is pulled back is extraordinary.

She is around thirty, with strong features and short brown hair, but John can barely register her face. Her body has been... sliced. Not cut, not stabbed, but slashed into.

"Some of these wounds are post mortem," says Sherlock. He points to certain gashes.

"Agreed," says John, pulling on gloves. "This is probably what killed her." He indicates a deep slice on her inner thigh. "Femoral artery, no going back after that."

"Yes. Does it look like self harm gone wrong, to you?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Exactly." Sherlock is pleased with John's assessment.

"So it's murder," says John, "and a particularly dramatic one at that. What's her history, what's her connection with Barcelona?"

Logan runs them through the known facts. The deceased lived here teaching English at a local school. Devout Christian. Had suffered from depression from time to time, but not for several years now. Lived in the Barri Gotic in a rented room. She shopped for clothes, according to a search of her flat, at the large department store El Corte Ingles, for fish and vegetables at la Boqueria, was heavily involved with her local church and its many festival days. Was loved by everyone who knew her – "That is not a fact," interrupts Sherlock, "that is conjecture and impossible to prove."

Logan glances from John to Sherlock, and John just nods. _This is what Sherlock is like. Leave him be._

She had no history of self harm, although necessarily this is not an indicator that none took place.

"The indicator is the utter lack of classic scarring," says Sherlock, lifting her wrist. "Clear."

"Who would want to kill her?" asks John. "Any enemies, feuds, any political involvement?" There is ancient turbulence in Catalonia.

"None that we've discovered," says Logan.

"Which obviously does not rule out a lot," says Sherlock acidly. "What was on her when she was found?"

They spread out the sad collection of items in their transparent evidence bags. Lipstick, tin of lip balm, keys, wallet - two cards and some change, no receipts - tissues, and cigarettes.

"Hmmn," says Sherlock. "We'll return to the market when it's closed and identify exactly where she was killed. For now, I need to think."

* * *

The Barri Gotic, gothic quarter, is made of narrow streets, alleys really, which appear to be too narrow for a car except when a tiny Seat shoots past, wing mirrors grazing the cracked plaster of the tall, shuttered buildings either side. Wrought-iron lanterns jut from the walls. There is litter, and graffiti, and darkness despite the bright sun.

John listens as Sherlock works through various theories. And after a while John says, "Lunch," and just walks into the cafe he has spotted, and orders plates of tapas: whitebait and squid and paella and tortilla and things he has to point at on the counter, and he has not checked to see if Sherlock followed him in here but Sherlock has. They sit at the counter and stare ahead at the array of bottles, glasses and cups piled up on the mirrored shelves behind the bar.

"The cuts were vertical," says Sherlock. He picks up calamari in his long fingers, places it in his mouth. He makes a face at John: a huge concession is being made by Sherlock here, purely for John's benefit, since Sherlock is fine. John just points at the food.

Sherlock takes a slice of tortilla, gestures with it. "Apart from the fact that someone else was clearly involved in order to administer post mortem wounds and drag the body to the Placa Reial, it would be nearly impossible to maintain such perfectly vertical slashes if you were hacking at yourself with a sword."

"Sword," says John.

"The cuts were too long to have been made by, say, a kitchen knife, and the shape of the wound is concomitant with that made by a sword being pressed against the flesh – it conformed to the contours of a superior weapon, shallow at top and bottom, deeper in the centre."

They dip their whitebait into the mayonnaise.

"Not a single sword," adds Sherlock. "The shapes of gash varied from wound to wound. I would say half a dozen different swords. "

"So we're looking for someone with ready access to a wide selection of medieval weapons," says John. He smiles at Sherlock. "I hoped this would be an interesting one."

"It's not really," says Sherlock. "We'll be done by tea time."

"Tea time here is ten in the evening." The locals like to eat late and then promenade for a while.

"Civilised," says Sherlock.

"Don't think that means you're dodging more food later," says John.

He is glad that Sherlock is eating. He can see that Sherlock has calmed down, too. The phone has not made a sound since they reached the police station. Sherlock's face has relaxed and he is looking at John more in the old way, like a part of the furniture, an object to be taken for granted and relied upon, something which is simply there. John does not object to this: he knows how he fits into Sherlock's working day. And simply being there for someone is wonderfully uncomplicated.

He smiles at Sherlock and Sherlock smiles back. After the last few months it seems like a miracle.

John stops smiling. "A miracle," he says. "Swords." He grabs the guidebook. "Look. St Eugenia."

He passes the book to Sherlock.

"She was a saint," John says. "She was tortured, including being placed in a barrel of swords. Then crucified. She's one of Barcelona's patron saints, and she is associated with curing the sick."

Sherlock takes the book and absorbs the page in a single glance, then stares at John. "This was a religious punishment. Therefore there is a strong possibility that the dead girl had committed a religious crime."

"Like what," says John. "Stealing from the collection plate?" He snaps the last breadstick in two and hands one half to Sherlock.

"Hardly grounds for such a vicious and evocative murder. No, she did something which truly outraged the murderer. Something to do with the saint." Sherlock crunches through the breadstick and wipes his hands on a serviette. "And the murderer has something to do with the market."

They stroll again, along dim alleys between graffiti-scrawled buildings, lines of washing strung between opposite balconies. At one point they pass beneath a bridge, an ethereal thing with gothic arches enclosing a covered passage, fretwork at the peak of the arches sending sunlight through in dappled patterns onto the heads of the tourists photographing it from below. John admires the buildings, and Sherlock. Sherlock thinks.

"Coffee," Sherlock says after a while. He nods towards a tiny shop on a corner which has a sticker in its window indicating the brand of coffee on offer.

John looks at him out of the corner of his eye. Sherlock has eaten something, and thanks to the murder he is gradually relaxing down to normal Sherlock levels, in other words, fiercely tense with bursts of being truly wound up, but mostly what he needs is sleep.

"I'll order," says John. "You get a table." They enter the little cafe and everyone in it looks at them.

"People don't sit down for coffee, here," says Sherlock. "They stand at the bar with a _cortado_ and exchange news and then leave."

"I sit down," says John. "And today, so do you." He takes out the guidebook.

"Oh for god's sake. Don't try to speak Catalan. It's embarrassing."

"It's courtesy," says John. "Sit!"

Sherlock goes to a corner, perches on a chair at a table which is far too small for his long legs, and scowls.

John flips through the guidebook and looks up a word. Asks the waiter for two coffees, _descafeïnat_.

He brings Sherlock a plate of sweet pastries, and the waiter puts two coffees down on their table. John looks hard at Sherlock and Sherlock eats, with bad grace. "Thank you," says John. "Now drink up, and I assume you're wanting to find the church of Saint Eugenia." He hands over the guidebook again.

Sherlock holds up his phone, with a map of key religious sites of Barcelona displayed. "We are just round the corner from it," he says. "And a phone is far more discreet than a big print book which shouts, mug me, I have no idea where I'm going or how to call for help."

"Oh shush," says John.

"Revolting coffee," says Sherlock.

"You're welcome."

* * *

Afternoon light casts long shadows ahead of them as they approach the church where St Eugenia has her main shrine. The giant arched doors on the front are open.

Sherlock enters and John follows, and gapes. The interior is gold, entirely gold. Encrusted is the word which springs to John's mind. Angels, candlesticks, paintings, ceiling, walls, chalices and other ornaments John does not know the names for – all gold.

The warden is not presently available. Sherlock makes a nuisance of himself until he becomes available. A man of at least ninety approaches them with painful steps. He stops in front of them and looks up at Sherlock sourly.

"What is the most precious item in this church?" Sherlock asks, and then repeats this in what appears to be perfect Catalan.

The elderly man sniffs, then leads him directly to a metal cage affixed to the wall of the church, level with the sumptuous altar. He mumbles something and gives the cage a small bow. "The finger of Saint Eugenia," Sherlock says.

They are surrounded by gold. Once again Sherlock has asked the right question in the right way.

There is a wooden box, banded with black iron, inside the cage.

"May we see it?" Sherlock asks.

He waits with surprising patience while the old man refuses, but then adds, "Because I think it has been stolen."

This gets a shocked response, and the keys to the cage and the box are produced. The warden gestures to John and Sherlock to stand back, as if breathing on the relic might harm it.

John has no intention of getting close enough to a five hundred year old finger to breathe on it. People kiss it, during the saint's annual parade. His skin crawls at the idea of all the germs.

The box is opened and the warden's wail fills the church.

The relic is gone.

"Ok," says Sherlock. "Don't worry," he tells the warden, patting the old man's shoulder as people rush towards them. "I know where it is."

* * *

They return to the police station. It is dark outside now and the lanterns are lit, casting white light into the eerie alleyways. A priest from the church has been found and walks with them, his long robes swirling around him.

"I knew it was odd," says Sherlock in the evidence room. "Why have lipstick _and_ lip balm?"

He opens the tin of lip balm, and there, looking like a shrivelled red bean, is the centuries-old little finger of a saint. The priest exclaims thanks for the miracle.

Sherlock begins talking. "The murderer is a fishmonger at la Boqueria. It will be someone known to the priest, someone from the congregation of the church of St Eugenia. I believe that the dead girl, who helped with the regular ceremonies for the saint and had access to the relic, took the finger believing it would help her with her mental health issues, and that the fishmonger witnessed the crime and was incensed at the desecration of their saint's remains. A simple crime of passion, albeit an imaginative use of what he no doubt believed was poetic justice."

He stops abruptly.

Logan's translation catches up and they all wait for Sherlock.

"A check of the fishmonger's long filleting knives should corroborate the theory, as will the blood on the inside of one of his barrels of salt fish," says Sherlock, and stops again.

He staggers.

John steps in. "Home," he says. "You need rest."

Sherlock protests with furious embarrassment. "I'm his doctor," says John to Logan. "Come on." Sherlock follows, glowering.

The cab takes them back to John's hotel, and they take the rickety lift up to John's room. Sherlock is wilting by the minute. He voluntarily sits in the armchair. John makes him a coffee from the sachets of instant provided by the hotel. He doesn't let Sherlock see which packet.

John rings Reception. "What is the earliest time I can have room service breakfast?"

"Six o'clock, sir."

"Thank you."

Sherlock is asleep in the chair. Multiple bouts of enforced sitting still, plus caffeine free beverages, has done the trick.

John heaves him awkwardly onto the bed. Takes off his shoes. Hesitates, leaves the socks. Too personal. He undoes a couple of shirt buttons. Sherlock's shirts are like corsets, sleeping in them must be bad for you.

He draws the thin cover over Sherlock, sighing at the empty, soft, horizontal space beside him on the bed, then settles in the chair.

After five minutes he gives up and goes to sleep on the floor.

* * *

When John wakes, Sherlock is still out of it. John goes to check on him, just pulse and colour, and he is fine. He is simply asleep, completely shattered. There is no sign even of dreaming, if Sherlock dreams.

John stands for a while, watching him rest. "You," he murmurs. "Just you." John rubs his hand over his eyes. Sherlock.

The breakfast arrives and John sighs and wakes Sherlock with a hand to his cheek. "Time to get up," he says softly. "I've got coffee."

Sherlock opens his eyes and stares at John. Gradually focusing. "Liesl," he says, scrabbling to sit up.

"I texted her."

He sees the look of panic on Sherlock's face. "Don't worry," John adds. "I checked which SIM I sent it from." John shows him the text. It is brief and cold and references work.

Relief. Sherlock sits and draws his knees up to his chin. He pours coffee for them and sits holding his cup against his lips, watching John over the rim. He still looks tired, but better. He takes a sip of coffee, actual coffee this time, and keeps eye contact with John as his lips meet the hot black liquid. Sherlock moves the cup away, very slowly, his upper lip just catching on the edge of the cup.

John's gaze has dropped involuntarily to Sherlock's mouth. He moves it back to his eyes. Drinks coffee back at him with a bland expression. Honestly. _Sherlock_. But right now there are things to say.

"Listen," says John, sitting on the end of the bed with the breakfast tray between him and Sherlock's feet. "I don't know what's going on. Liesl. You. A case. But if you need my help, any time, wherever you are, just tell me. You don't have to explain. Just tell me what needs doing and I'll do it, ok."

"Mary," says Sherlock.

"Not relevant to this," says John. The truest thing he has said in ages.

That gets a piercing look. Pure calculation.

"You sleep alone," says Sherlock after a moment of staring at John's face and hands.

"This is about you," says John. "Tell me that you are ok. Please. I'm concerned."

Sherlock does not reply. He is pressing his lips together. Looking forbidding.

John knows that look. _Go away, don't ask me, how dare you imply I am fallible._

He ignores it. "Tell me this is for a case. I don't care what else. If this is for a case then I know you're all right, just running yourself into the ground."

"Yes," says Sherlock. "It's a case."

Lying? No. Sherlock is looking at him with his vulnerable face. Just for a second John sees him as he was last winter, and then the pout, the raised chin, the challenge is back.

"Ok," says John. "I have stopped worrying. But you must eat. I will text you to eat and sleep. I will!"

Sherlock smiles.

"And the thing about help still stands."

"Thank you."

They part after breakfast. Sherlock stands with his hand on the door of John's room. He looks at John, one of the long looks they used to share before John's marriage. _Memorizing me_, thinks John.

Sherlock comes back into the room and shakes John's hand. John clasps it in both his own, and a moment passes between them, regret and gratitude mixed in with gladness and trust.

John forces himself to release Sherlock's hand, and lets him go.

* * *

**Author's note:** Barcelona's St Eulalia really was tortured in a barrel of knives, but I changed her name and pretty much everything else. The heart of Dublin's patron saint was really stolen last year in a crime which has never been solved. There really is a breathtakingly gold-encrusted church in Barcelona's gothic quarter, and the fantastic Arc del Bisbe bridge. And they eat dinner very, very late in the evening, but I can't say I fancied the piglet.

Also - just two words on seeing Benedict in Star Trek last night: *his voice*... People stopped with popcorn halfway to their lips whenever he spoke. Seriously.  
-Sef


	21. Beautiful, dangerous, mine

Liesl is unhappy when Sherlock arrives back at their suite. This particular suite is pale pink, with heavy net curtains across the full length windows, and does not overlook the beach. Rudi booked it and there is no balcony.

Liesl starts the moment the door is shut. There are demands, insistences on details of where Sherlock has been and who he has seen. Sherlock explains that he worked, lost track of time, needed to sleep and just walked into a hotel. "I slept in my clothes," he says, showing her his crumpled suit. "I solved the case," he adds.

She inspects him with her challenging eyes, as if she could tell whether he has undressed between now and when she last saw him. She is proud and jealous and possessive of him, this man she has captured. He supposes he admires her strength. If she were weak he could not persuade himself even for a moment. She is interesting and difficult, and he needs her urgently to tell him the plan, or give it away, but thus far that part of his mission is not working. He is running out of time. The wedding is in a few weeks, and after that he suspects that Mycroft will remove him from the project. It may even not last that long. Mycroft is concerned about the engagement, although Sherlock has explained his reasoning. Mycroft remains suspicious and increasingly demands that Sherlock prove he is all right, that he can cope, that he is not becoming emotionally involved.

Sherlock is fine. Mentally things are clear. Physically he is drained.

Liesl will tell him, will trust him. She has already demonstrated the ultimate human trust in him and it is a measure of her fanaticism that she considers her work, her secret work, above even this.

He thinks she is the coldest person he has ever met. Cold yet passionate, an extremely dangerous combination. Someone who can keep their mind and body separated for long periods, what would such a person not be capable of?

He smiles, in her direction, because she is so like him, in certain ways. But he is not cold.

She purses her lips at his smile and continues her assessment of his likely guilt in staying out overnight.

He stands impassive, accepting her wrath until she relents and says, "Now," and he says "All right," and manages a more genuine seeming smile and they go to bed.

He looks at his hand on the pillow above her head, at the agate ring John gave him, and thinks of John, calm and loving, caring for him, scolding him for not looking after himself, desperate to know what is going on with the mysterious case which Sherlock is not even supposed to have mentioned, worried, clearly, about Sherlock and Liesl (and puzzled by it, of course he is, he is utterly lost trying to think about how Sherlock can go from desiring John to becoming engaged to this woman, and Sherlock can see the answer in John's own misery with Mary, the answer being, of course, that it is impossible, that you cannot love and desire someone one minute, and then commit to their opposite the next, and for both to be real.) John will understand, soon. And meanwhile, he made Sherlock sleep, and did not so much as touch him except to put him on the bed, although he did remove his shoes, though not socks, and undo his shirt, just one button, two buttons...

Liesl makes an appreciative noise, briefly putting Sherlock off.

John woke Sherlock by touching him, his hand on Sherlock's wrist, checking his pulse. Those firm fingers, steadiness and love against the beat of Sherlock's heart. And then as Sherlock lay there with his eyes closed, counting with John, he heard John sigh and whisper, _You, just you,_ and what was his expression then, was it frustration, annoyance (no, definitely not) or sadness, or longing? Perhaps it was longing, and John was wishing that he could bend and kiss Sherlock like he used to, on the lips, Sherlock feeling the whisper touch of John's soft sweet mouth, or perhaps John longed to kiss Sherlock's neck, maybe with teeth, maybe with roaming hands, and his body pressed against Sherlock's, and how could Sherlock have resisted that, obviously he couldn't, he and John and a hotel room and nobody knowing where they were or who with, intoxicating, and not just the passion but the warmth and love and rightness of being there together, but then again the passion and John's hands on him, slipping off his ruined suit, stroking and caressing and enticing him over the edge.

John's dark blue eyes and square hands, John fiercely protective when it comes to Sherlock, John helpless against a lip on the rim of a teacup.

_Beautiful, dangerous, mine._ _Still mine._

And there is the precipice, and Sherlock goes over it gladly, blotting out Liesl calling his name and keeping his mouth tight shut as the moment judders and pulses through him. Fragments of John,of the past and future, of himself,of everything which made him, fly about and reshape themselves into new and magical forms in the secret places where no eye can travel and no heart can influence the outcome.

As Liesl recovers with gasps and whimpers and her fingernails in Sherlock's back, Sherlock hears music. It has been a long time.

"Where are you going?" asks Liesl.

"Composing," says Sherlock, sliding out of bed and putting his bare feet into the thick pink carpet. "Stay there, rest."

He has done his bit for the mission this morning already.

* * *

A week later, the breakthrough comes. Sherlock is scanning the Barcelona papers at four a.m.; Liesl is in the en suite preparing to be on set and in Make-up for five o'clock. When she is working, time and rest mean nothing to her.

Sherlock has received a message from Mycroft, in the form of a coded request for help on a case. The message tells Sherlock, in essence, to have a result very soon or consider this avenue of investigation dead. Mycroft's contacts will pursue other methods. Sherlock crumples the message and puts it into his pocket for destruction once he has left the hotel.

As he stands, impatient energy refusing stillness, Liesl emerges from the bathroom with her hair wet and an expression of stunned happiness on her face. She comes over to him and kisses him, making his shirt damp. She is holding her phone.

"I have news," she says. "At last."

She looks up at him and sees his eager face. She sighs tenderly and presses her hand over his heart. "It is work," she explains. "We have been given permission, have been given full access, total discretion over what to film, for the pan-European rail project."

Sherlock manages to look blank.

"The rail project," she says. "You know how Rudi has been trying to get my production company some serious work, a serious documentary project. Our crew's credentials are superb. The doubt was about me. But I have convinced them to employ us. We will film and interview and record everything about the completion of the sub Alpine tunnel, we will be there on the spot for the inauguration, we will prove that I am not just a pretty face and that it has never been about clothes or underwear or kissing a man to titillate the audience."

Her voice has dropped, and she speaks breathlessly. She burns with energy and with despite for the work she has done to bring her team to this triumph.

"I am happy for you," Sherlock says. He kisses her forehead. "When does the project start?" Time, he needs time, now that the target has been identified. The European rail project! Its success will unite a fragile and bickering set of nations. Its failure would break Europe apart, financially and politically. The project has been on the edge for months, and only heavy intervention by the British and German governments has prevented its collapse. And now Liesl has it in her sights.

It is big, it is prestigious, its demise will be captured on film and the Europe will disintegrate.

He admires her boldness. A tunnel. He assumes a bomb. Dignitaries killed: political, structural and therefore also financial damage. She is going for every front at once.

"It begins in October," Liesl says, eyes glowing. "Late October. Which means, my love-"

"That we need to bring the wedding forward. I agree completely."

She kisses his face all over. "You are perfect," she says. "I will contact the wedding planners today. We will find a nearer date."

"This project," Sherlock says, allowing his voice to take on a slight quaver. "You will access everywhere in this, whatever it is. Tunnel. Will it be dangerous?"

She laughs at him. "You know how I love danger. Remember me in that harness for the Eiffel Tower shoot?"

He does. Liesl in skin-tight clothing dangling above a fascinated crowd for the promotion of mascara. It was daring and aesthetically perfect, and it was before their engagement "Yes. It was terrifying." She must not be near the bomb. He does not suspect her of kamikaze tendencies, but cannot take the risk.

She laughs again. "This will be dangerous, yes, at times, but for your sake, I promise I will stay well back from anything too ... harmful."

"Thank you," he says, holding her tightly. "I could not bear it if anything happened to you."

He means it, and she must sense something, because she kisses him again and again, and then shrieks and points to the clock and rushes back to the bathroom to get ready for work.

Sherlock stands vibrating with pent up tension. He will alert Mycroft to this new development. He will point out the foolishness of any attempt to remove Sherlock from Liesl's side until immediately before the terror attack. He will remind them that to break up this group of which she is the figurehead and financier, they need to catch them and humiliate them in one deft move, and that his absence would arouse suspicion.

He must not be removed until the last moment. He needs all the time possible before she is taken away forever.


	22. Surprised by a camel

John strolls from the Strand down Villiers Street, contemplating his latest case for Sherlock.

Villiers is a narrow pedestrianised street of restaurants and coffee shops, a far cry from the scruffy shops he remembers from his youth. The new version is smart, crowded, and has the magnificently refurbished Charing Cross on one side, and the gentrified Watergate gardens at its end. John is here for these gardens and their use in the possible new case. As usual the case is nothing earth-shattering, just an amusing puzzle which John hopes will divert his friend.

John walks through the gardens. The sky is overcast but the day is warm and muggy. It is a Friday lunchtime in late September, and people are celebrating the proximity of the weekend with wine and beer and makeshift picnics purchased from the Spar at the top of the road.

John wonders about stopping for a beer: he has taken the photos he will send Sherlock, to show him the location of the odd briefcase theft he wants Sherlock to investigate. The rest of John's lunch break is his own. But the idea of sitting, alone amongst all these people enjoying themselves, is not appealing.

He goes for a walk through the gardens instead, thinking to cut back up towards the Strand further along and hop on a bus back to work.

The gardens are pleasant enough. John spots a statue in their centre - a statue of a camel. He has never noticed it before: it does not seem new, so perhaps it has been relocated here. A lot of statues in London are of soldiers on horses: this is of a soldier on a camel.

He approaches it, and when it is nicely framed, raises his phone to take a snap –

-Just as a woman walks in front of the lens, her back to him.

She is slight and dainty and dressed in a figure-hugging blue skirt suit, showing off her pert bottom and neat ankles. She would draw John's eye on any day of the week, standing alone beside a military statue looking pensive – but he is transfixed now because this woman is his wife.

He lowers the phone to call out to her. Maybe they can have a drink together. He feels as if they barely cross paths these days.

Before he can speak, he hears her name in another man's voice. Mary turns to her left, smiling, holding out her arms.

The man striding towards her is tall and slender and wearing an expensive-looking suit. He has dark hair, curling over his collar, and a chiselled face. His manner speaks of confidence and success. He greets Mary with a kiss on the cheek, but not a colleague kind of kiss, a kiss involving lingering lips, his hand on her waist, and heavy breathing - and John's vague idea that this stranger is just a friend, some work associate, dissolves as he stands next to a rhododendron with a river of Japanese tourists parting around him, following their leader's pink umbrella.

Mary and the slender man walk off hand in hand, she looking up at him dotingly, he smiling with a mix of fondness and arrogance.

Some instinct causes John to lift his phone again and click.

He switches the image straight off and pockets his phone. He goes to stand by the camel, a memorial to the Imperial Camel Corps, and looks up at the proud animal with its burden of soldier and supplies.

Mary has vanished into the crowds. John reads about the statue without taking any of it in.

His wife and this man.

And the first thing he thought, his heart pounding as Mary greeted her lover, was a shock of hurt and misery because he thought the man was Sherlock.

The fact that it is not fills him with relief.

He wanders after them towards the Embankment. They are moving in the direction of Temple, where Mary works. The man is definitely not Sherlock. John would know him anywhere and this man, although a very similar type, is not as -

Beautiful.

- Not as good looking as Sherlock.

No, this bloke is a Sherlock substitute. He probably does not even sound anything like Sherlock.

John stops dead and splays his fingers out at his sides. He deliberately turns back and makes for the camel again.

This is beyond ridiculous.

His wife, for pity's sake! She is having an affair.

But because it is not Sherlock having the affair with her, John finds that he does not care very much at all.

What is wrong with him? As if he doesn't know.

He recognises the man, in fact. It is the colleague, the lawyer colleague that Mary's ex accused her of having an affair with. John has seen a video, on a USB stick he and Sherlock got from the ex's flat, of Mary and this bloke having a pretty harmless looking lunch, last winter. Mary always said he was just a friend. (A friend who, now John has seen him in the flesh, looks a lot like Sherlock.)

He thinks of how Mary came to Sherlock looking for help with the nasty ex. The ex was deeply unpleasant, there can be no doubt. No one deserves what he did to Mary. But now, married to John, Mary cannot claim to be completely innocent.

(John and Sherlock, meeting in secret in Barcelona.)

Mary has been lying to John.

(John standing by Sherlock asleep, looking at him.)

Mary has ... deceived John. Maybe right from the start.

(John's mouth on Sherlock's, John saying, if I'd known. John's hand in Sherlock's hair, feeling the sob in Sherlock'sbreath. On John's wedding day. He had known.)

Mary the deceiver.

(John.)

The camel stands steadfast, distant and proud. The vagaries of others pass it by and it remains as it always was.

John texts Sherlock. _New small case for you. Sending details now._

He forgets to sign off and Sherlock's reply shows that Sherlock has noticed this aberration.

_What's wrong? Where are you? SH_

John looks around. _I'm Ok,_ he says. _Surprised by a camel. J_

He laughs bitterly and stuffs the phone back into his trouser pocket, and thinks that as mundane as the case is, he has helped Sherlock, and perhaps found a way out of what he can no longer even think of as his marriage.

* * *

John is wordless through dinner that night, speaking just once, when Mary says, "I read in the paper today -" and he knows it will be about Liesl and the wedding and cannot bear it, and just says, "Don't," in a tone which he has never used to Mary before, and Mary looks at him sharply and says, "I was only going to say about the new railway thing," and John scowls at being wrong, he is always wrong, and eats the rest of his microwave pasta in silence.

She pulls her duvet onto the sofa and this is his instruction to go to bed. He cannot stand a row, not now, last thing, and both of them tired, and so he goes.

He will have to talk to her tomorrow.

He lies awake with his mind turning their marriage over and over like a coin ready to be flipped. On one side, accusation; on the other, confession. Neither side is the winner.

Is Mary sleeping with that lawyer? Is that why she is not sleeping with John?

But then the phone calls, the late night sex calls. Are they to this man?

John still has not managed to steal her phone and get that number. And part of him thinks that he ought not to. He has already seen proof of her infidelity.

But although she gazed at the Sherlock-alike with kiss-me eyes, the sex was all on his side, not on hers. She saved hers for listening to that voicemail message.

John ought to trust her. If you need to go through your spouse's private things then there is already a problem whether you find proof of wrongdoing or not.

He does not trust her.

He has not trusted her in ages.

He doesn't even care, he realises.

This is a mess and he needs to escape from it. But before he does, he will find out whose voice that is.

He gets out of bed as she goes to the bathroom to clean her teeth. He might procrastinate over talk, but never over action. He hears teeth being cleaned, then the shower going. She is in there naked, singing actually, that Taylor Swift thing, _I knew you were trouble._

Six months ago John would have been climbing into the shower with her and helping her get really clean, a couple of times.

Now he gets up, glancing to make sure the bathroom door is shut. Goes to the living room and the arm of the sofa where her phone is.

Unlocks it - he has watched to see the code - and scrolls to the list of recently dialled numbers. A London number, which he notes down in his own phone. Probably the lawyer. Numbers labelled with the names of her girlfriends, her sisters, her mum.

But one number, labelled Tesco, comes up again and again. Nobody rings Tesco that much. In fact, nobody rings Tesco at all, do they?

Mary is singing, _Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground, oh_, as John dials the number.

He listens.

He already recognised the number of course. And he knew, in his gut, with his heart, who she was calling. But somehow he is still flattened by it, still hurt, slapped around the face by something bigger and stronger and nastier than he ever expected of her.

The number is the Baker Street flat, and the vibrant baritone on the other end, inviting callers to leave an extremely detailed message if they have something interesting to say and not to bother otherwise, is Sherlock's.

John ends the call and leaves the phone unlocked on the sofa, that number still on screen. She will know, and he no longer gives a damn.


	23. Brutalist

"Morning Greg."

"John! What, you commuting now? This isn't your usual stop." Greg Lestrade looks smaller, greyer, wearier even than usual in a trenchcoat and reluctant suit. But he still has a smile for John as he emerges from the Tube into a dim overcast morning.

"No."

They are on the pavement outside Euston Square Tube, an easy place to collar someone because there is only one exit. Greg has a cup of coffee in his hand, ready for the walk to the office. John has a small holdall over one shoulder and the morning paper, now rolled up under his arm. He has been leaning on the wall outside the station entrance waiting for Greg.

"Just wanted to ask a question," John says. "More of a favour, actually." They walk. There is rain in the air, and petrol fumes, and cigarette smoke from all the people desperately getting a nicotine fix before being shut up indoors all day.

"What kind of favour?" Greg says. He holds his coffee but does not drink it. The cup is not a takeaway cup, but an insulated brushed aluminium Thermos. A cup for a man who cannot rely on people to bring him the coffee while it is still hot.

"Is there a magic number," John asks. "A phone number?"

Greg eyes him suspiciously.

"If for example," John goes on, "I was working on a case, just a private case of my own, and it all went a bit mad, took me all over the place, and I needed help, and if nipping down to the station was not an option - is there a number I can call? I'd only need it once, I'm guessing. I wouldn't be making a habit of it. In theory."

"Now you're scaring me. And I don't like to be scared, not on a Tuesday." Greg has the weight of the world on his shoulders. John would feel guilty about asking him for this, except that it is necessary, and for Sherlock.

They pause at a pedestrian crossing, the new kind with the seconds counting down on a red display on the other side of the road. Then beeps as the crossing is clear. The Euston Road roars beside them.

"This is about him," Greg says. "Sherlock."

"No," says John.

"Yes, it is. He's done something," Greg states. "Something so bad I don't even want to think about it. Where is he, anyway?"

"Right now? Germany. Throwing seven kinds of strop because his fiancée wants him to wear a frilly shirt." John grins a bit. It was a hilarious text. Sherlock in prenuptial hell. John texted back, _Send pictures_, but Sherlock hasn't.

Greg wrinkles his nose. "You're in touch, then."

"On and off."

"So what's he up to?"

"Sherlock?" John shrugs. "He's marrying a film star. As you do."

"The number," says Greg. "You've already got it."

They are at the police station steps. The station is a large, ugly concrete building, made of prefabricated grey slabs, pebbledashed slabs, a grim look even under sunshine and horribly brutalist under London's clouded sky and palpable pollution.

Anderson and Donovan are on their way out, coming down the steps with faces which tell John that Greg is never going to make it to his desk today. Crime scene faces.

"What do you mean?" John asks.

Greg laughs. Then he sighs. He has seen Anderson and Donovan too.

"Sherlock's brother," he says. "Whatsisface. His is the only magic number you need." He claps John on the shoulder.

"No," John says. "I can't ring Mycroft. If I needed to. I need, I don't know, local police, international police." He flashes on helicopters, a couple of Apache gunships, and a Chinook transporter, with men abseiling down to rescue Sherlock. "Please."

Greg hesitates.

Donovan is almost at their sides.

"Listen," says Greg. "We owe Sherlock, ok? He's helped us out loads in the past and never even expected a thanks. But this is a one-time deal, right. Ring this number once and then you're done. And you didn't get it from me." He scrolls through his phone, searching, then writes down a number in his notebook and tears out the page, gives it to John.

John smiles grimly at him.

"Well, if it isn't our favourite hanger on and freak lover," says Donovan. She looks disdainful. It is her default expression.

"Hello, Sally," says John.

"Where's your special friend?" she asks. Anderson smirks.

John pulls the newspaper out from under his arm, unrolls it and shows the pair of them page four. "Getting married this afternoon to the world's most beautiful woman, according to this."

He holds up the spread showing the schloss, the VIPs, and Sherlock in a crimson suit next to a beaming Liesl at the engagement press conference a few weeks back. Liesl is radiant. She has her hand on Sherlock's arm. He is smiling too, an expression Donovan will never have witnessed, and his arm is around Liesl's waist, his fingers clasping her hip in a pretty unsubtle reminder that recently they had sex and soon will be having it again. John has become immune to this kind of picture, to this vision of possessive-boyfriend Sherlock, but he still recalls clearly the first time he saw Sherlock in public lust with Liesl.

Donovan blinks.

Anderson coughs and chokes. He leans in for a better look at Liesl, or possibly, her cleavage.

"Don't you watch the news, Donovan?" says Greg. "Sherlock's been shacked up with this girl all year." He glances at John. "Don't tell me you haven't watched the balcony scene a hundred times."

Donovan scowls at that, frowning and screwing up her face. John thinks she is actually blushing. "Is he really going to do it? I thought it was a wind up, you know, what with him being -"

"What," asks John, folding the paper. He furrows his brow as if confused. "Him being what, Sally?"

He stares at her, daring her to say it, out loud, to him. Anderson is still flushed from his close look at Liesl in a plunging evening gown.

"Being so busy," Donovan says weakly. "You know. Driven."

"Oh," says John. "I thought you were going to say something else." He maintains eye contact with her. He will not be first to blink, not when it comes to Sherlock.

Donovan flounces off. Anderson moves next to her in a belated show of solidarity.

Greg shakes John's hand. "Stay in touch," he says.

"I will," says John. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a celebrity wedding to attend."

He hefts his holdall over his shoulder, sneers a bit at Anderson and Donovan, and saunters away.

* * *

They do not even see each other at the airport. John checks in at the last possible moment, hand luggage only – a benefit of being a man, he thinks, no bulky evening gowns to worry about – and goes directly to the security queue where people still, after more than ten years, are caught out by the fact that you cannot take knives, scissors, spray cans onto an aeroplane. The bin before the scanners is full of discarded perfume bottles and cans of Lynx. There are few complaints, though. People know which scenario they would rather have.

Heathrow is being efficient today and he is airside with minimal delay.  
John heads to a stand-up coffee bar and drinks coffee with his head down and his eye on the departures board. He remains stoically un-tempted by overpriced luggage or designer fragrance in the bright, noisy shops all around. The flight is called and John still stands there, judging how long it will take him to walk to the gate. Finally he moves, is last through the gate, smiling disarmingly at the frowning stewardess, and steps onto the plane where his is the last seat to be occupied and Mary is in the one beside it, gazing at him with a taut face and irritation that he made the plane and her, think he might not be coming.

"Morning," says John.

"You almost missed the flight," says Mary.

He does not answer. Almost is not a crime. Actually is a crime, and she is the queen of actually.

"Have you got your suit?" she asks.

He looks up at the overhead locker where he stowed his holdall.

"You haven't brought much, " she says.

He does not even look at her.

She sighs impatiently.

The plane takes off. John cannot see out of the window, which is a shame. He likes flying. Likes the feeling of lifting away from reality, seeing the familiar world transform into the impossible, trees and houses and people too small to see even though they are there, and their nature has not changed. It is you who changes in flight, you who becomes impossible, for a time. You are among clouds, you rise above the grey and into a secret world of permanent sunlight, a world which exists up here always but is unseen ninety percent of the time by people on the surface of Britain.

Up here, perspective is a little easier to gain and it might be possible to talk civilly to your unfaithful wife.

"This is not about finding Sherlock's number on your phone, " John says, turning his head to look calmly at her. "Not about finding out who it is that you ring every night," he adds, just to be clear. "This is about seeing you holding hands with another man next to a statue of a camel. Seeing him kiss you hello as if it is not the first time he's ever done that. Seeing you looking at him as if you like him a lot. That's what this is about."

He does not mention the Sherlock similarity. That is too much to unpick yet, even on a plane. But he takes out his phone and shows Mary the picture he took of her, and this man, by the camel.

Mary flushes. She did not know, then, that he knew. She must have thought this was entirely about Sherlock. And in a way, she's right. "When did you know," she asks.

"Two weeks ago," he says. "I happened to be there. I saw you. " He shrugs.

"You never said anything. You just disappeared. "

"You know where I've been." Baker Street. Obviously.

His first act on arriving back there was to unplug the answerphone. He can't do anything about Sherlock's personal voicemail.

Sherlock, of course, knew about Mary's calls. How could he not? You don't get a hundred silent calls without wondering who is ringing. And once Mary texted him to ask him over to dinner, he would have her number and know who it belonged to. It's Sherlock. He knew.

John just hopes, probably pointlessly, that Sherlock does not understand what a silent call at midnight might mean. But he thinks that Sherlock does know. Sherlock is an expert in weird human behaviours.

John thinks of Sherlock in Barcelona saying, _You sleep alone_. He was doing his deduction face, looking at John as if seeing this fact in John's hands, eyes, hair. But the statement was not based on observation. It was based on Mary's calls.

John is grateful that Sherlock did not pursue the point. He is not ready to have a conversation about it yet. That conversation needs to be with Mary, first.

"Is this it then?" Mary asks. Her mouth is tight. Her voice is shaking but she is holding it together.

"Yes," says John. He turns and looks into her eyes. She is so pretty. She can be brilliant. But what is the point of being with a brilliant, pretty person who does not love you?

And what is the point if being with anyone who you do not truly love?

John would like to ask Sherlock that. If there had been a stag do, any time to catch Sherlock before the day, he would have. (Coward, John. You could have made time. You could have asked but you are afraid to hear the answer.)

"This was a mistake," John says. He gives Mary a sad smile and sees it reflected back. "Us, getting married. I'm sorry. But it was a mistake."

She breathes for a minute, then says quietly, "Yes."

They sit. A stewardess folds down their trays and places a paper coaster on each, then a cup of coffee, expertly poured at twenty thousand feet, on each coaster. Two tiny plastic tubs of milk are placed by each cup.

"Can I have a couple more milks please," John asks. "For my -"

He stops, but the stewardess has already doled out a few more.

"Thank you," says Mary. He knows she likes more milk in her coffee.

They drink the coffee, which tastes horrible, as almost everything does, up in the air. The ground has now dropped completely away and he and Mary are treading nothing, trying to find where to set down again.

John says, as gently as he can because this is not only Mary's fault: "This - us - was not marriage. This is certainly not how I thought marriage would be."

"What did you think it would be like?" she asks tiredly. She does not disagree, though.

He hesitates. Has to be honest now. All the lies have been killing him. How did he picture marriage? A partnership. Complete understanding of one another. Trust and dependability. Laughter and fun. Companionship, closeness, affection. And excitement. Not all the time, of course, but enough excitement to make the quiet nights in worth relishing. And sometimes, vicious fights with no holds barred because so much is at stake, followed, after a while, by the no-holds-barred making up. And, of course, lots and lots of fun in bed.

"I thought," he begins, watching her carefully on the crowded plane, seeing her tension and self restraint. She exists close to the edge these days and this will probably push her right off. He knows that this is the answer she dreads but he is going to tell her anyway because it is the truth. "I thought it would be like me and Sherlock, but with sex."

She shrieks.

* * *

They arrive at the Schloss where the wedding will take place. The location been downgraded slightly and is no longer a cluster of fairytale turrets nestling in a snowy vale. Instead it is a grand and rather forbidding mansion set in formal gardens, in the vicinity of Frankfurt.

John looks out of the taxi window and sees a lake, a miniature stone pyramid and the surreal sight of a carousel trapped in a cage.

The house itself is guarded by police and private security. The press have their own area. Guests - those like John and Mary who hold a magic invitation - are ushered into the main door and shown up to the second floor, where there are the guest bedrooms.

Mary has composed herself and John feels wretched but calm. He is conscious of his wedding ring, wishes he could simply take it off and be done, but life, real grown-up life with weddings and divorces, is not that simple.

"This is nice," Mary says. Their room has a view of the gardens, its own bathroom, and a lot of furniture in a heavy formal style. There is a four poster bed, but luckily, also a small sofa. John does not plan on sharing an intimate space with Mary, not tonight, probably not ever again.

"Yeah," John says. He gets out his suit for the wedding.

"I'm going to have a quick shower," says Mary. She has her phone in her hand. John knows that every detail of this will be on Facebook before the end of the evening. He wishes he had not brought her, but it had seemed too petty to refuse.

"Fine. I'm getting changed. I'll see you downstairs in the great hall."

"John -"

She comes close to him. She curves her hand on his shoulder and shows him her tear-filled eyes. "You're lovely," she says. "I wish -"

John sighs and gives her a hug without coming into any lower body contact. "Yeah," he says. "I know."

They stand for a moment, and Mary is crying, and John thinks about the future he imagined for them, which is now gone. He could probably mend this, even now, but knows in his heart that they would just be here again, or somewhere like it, in two months' time. Better to end it.

He blinks too. His wife. His dream, for that's all she ever was.


	24. Deliberately joyous

The voices are faint but clear, and Sherlock is reassured that he has placed the bug just right. Even after all these months, it is still an easy thing to misjudge, working as he does with the smallest and lightest equipment; get it wrong and you can hear flies buzzing, the breeze through the crack in the door, but no voices.

This is not his sort of work, under normal circumstances. It is dull. It is passive. It is powerless. It is, in fact, all the things he despises about conventional investigation: a world of gathering what you hope will be evidence, and then waiting for there to be a crime which fits the stuff you have got. However, this is the work he has been tasked with and so he is doing it, even when he does not want to, even when it is boring, even when he would much rather be spending his time more productively elsewhere.

He supposes these ideas make this his first ordinary job. Does that make him like ordinary people?

Hard not to snort at that notion, but he must remain silent, up here in the hot, dry attic of the wedding castle, because obviously he is not meant to be here, and if he makes a sound he might miss something happening in Liesl's pre-nuptial bedroom down below.

"How did you meet him?" A man with a hoarse voice. Sherlock recognises him from previous encounters he has recorded. He has seen him, too, working as a room service attendant, in several of the hotels where Sherlock and Liesl have stayed. This man and Liesl, performing menial roles in order to get close to their goal.

"You know how we met. Why are you questioning me now?" Liesl's voice, slow and bored. She has let these men into her bedroom while Sherlock is 'out', that is, in the attic listening to the bugs.

"You are about to marry this man and our project is coming to fruition. The timing is suspicious." Hoarse voice again. "So how did you meet?"

"I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar."

Sherlock does not recognise the reference but clearly she is mocking them.

"You lie." A second man, this one with a deep voice. Sherlock does not know this voice. He hears strength and muscle in it. Someone from high in the hierarchy of the group, who has come to oversee Liesl's mysterious wedding to Sherlock. None of them seem capable of understanding that Liesl is marrying not as part of any plan, but for love.

There is a rustle of movement and then the sound of flesh meeting flesh in a slap.

"Take your hand off me," says Liesl in a deadly voice. "My face is worth ten million euros and if you damage it everyone will be very angry."

A pause.

"My body is worth even more," Liesl adds. "Do not think of trying to hurt me where it cannot be seen. _He_ will see, remember?" Sneering.

Sherlock raises his eyebrows. She is fearless, even of these men who try to control her. And if they hurt her, Sherlock will come after them and hurt them tenfold.

"Tell us where you really met him," says the second man, the one with the Fingal's Cave voice.

She gives a brief laugh. "My diamond chain was stolen," she says. "My co-star recommended him. He found the thief and the necklace."

Sherlock imagines her shrugging, her scornful smile.

"Then what?" demands this man.

"He was ... charming," she says. "I invited him for dinner. He accepted."

Another pause. More shrugging, no doubt. Liesl shrugs a lot when she is bored, and these men clearly bore her.

"Do you know who he is?" the deep voice asks her. There is a nervousness about the question.

"Of course," she says. "He is famous. Like me," she reminds them. She funds this group, she is saying. Whatever they say, without her the project would never have been possible.

"That's not what we mean," says the deep voice. "His brother. Do you know who his brother is?"

Briefly they explain Mycroft and power. Sherlock cannot stop himself rolling his eyes. Tedious.

"I know all this," says Liesl. "He is here."

"Yes," they say.

Something happens then which Sherlock cannot work out. An object passed, a phone perhaps, or a camera? A gun?

"No," says Liesl. Her voice, though, has a quiver. Not many people would hear it – she is good – but Sherlock knows her very well and he can detect her fear.

"Are you reluctant?" demands hoarse voice.

"Don't be ridiculous. I am saying no, this is my wedding day, and no, because this would negate the whole point of our single strike campaign, and no, if you want this kind of crude work then find somebody crude to do it."

"It is an opportunity," says the hoarse voiced man. "And it would allow us to see what side your future husband really stands on."

Sherlock feels a chill. They plan to hurt Mycroft. A very stupid move, given the structures of security which surround him, and Liesl is right, it would ruin everything. Also, it is Mycroft. Sherlock is outraged at the sheer nerve. How dare they?

"My fiancé loves me unconditionally," Liesl declares proudly. "He would do anything I asked. And what you suggest would not prove anything. He would choose me, in either case. For love, or for politics. It will always be me."

So: they have asked her to participate in some scenario in which she and Mycroft are apparently in peril and Sherlock must choose. Liesl has correctly assessed that Sherlock would choose her, and that this would demonstrate nothing. She is clever. This is why she was his choice.

There are grunts and growls from the men. Sherlock imagines Liesl spitting at them. She is crass in disdain, as he has experienced many times.

"He loves me," she repeats. "And he is nothing to do with the campaign. When it comes to it he will support me."

"How do you know?"

Sherlock forces himself to sit still. _Do not speak, do not speak_, he projects to her in alarm.

"I simply know," says Liesl, and she has not broken her promise. Sherlock breathes again.

"Be very careful. Watch him."

"I am not stupid," she snaps.

"Where is he right now?" asks hoarse voice.

"Fetching fresh roses for me as I asked."

There is another pause. It is almost time for Sherlock to go. He has the roses but it would be odd if he was seen coming down the stairs with them instead of up.

The men seem at a loss after Liesl's flat refusal of their suggestion.

"The project. You will be there on the spot," says the deep voice at last. "You will film but also broadcast live. The commentary is already recorded -"

"Why was I not involved?" demands Liesl.

"You are not as indispensable as you imagine. - You will claim our victory and this may result in death."

"Yes," Liesl says calmly, shattering Sherlock's composure again. "It may, but it will not."

"The topping out is next week," says the deep voice.

"Yes." She is all business now. "The new equipment is mostly already here."

"You will have tonight for your ... marriage," says deep voice, "and tomorrow we drive south."

"The Italian Swiss border?" asks Liesl.

"Exactly."

"We will ruin them," Liesl says with furious vehemence. "They rape our countries and trample our people into poverty and we will crush them and begin our new era of earned prosperity." Her voice vibrates, distorting her words. Sherlock listens impassively to her bitter thirst for vengeance, as he has done since he began this task.

"Earned prosperity," echo the men, and then Sherlock hears the door of the suite opening.

He snatches up the roses and races downstairs.

* * *

The groom is obliged to arrive first and greet his guests. Sherlock stands at the arched stone entrance to the great hall, ready in his new blackest black suit and the ridiculous shirt with the frilled collar which was Liesl's choice. It is unimportant, but makes him look like a man playing at Cavaliers.

John is here, with Mary. They walk across the flagged floor together without touching. Of itself, this might be a reason for celebration, except that John looks so distressed. He is trying to conceal it, to appear as a delighted wedding guest. He and Sherlock, acting their parts. But John cannot conceal his feelings the way Sherlock can, and John's eyes show misery.

Sherlock watches them approach whilst murmuring greetings to the guests, most of whom are there because of Liesl, none of whom are interesting. Surely John is not - his heart pounds - miserable because of Sherlock's wedding? -No. This is about Mary. What has she done now?

Sherlock has not seen John and Mary together since their wedding day. This moment, as she gushes premature congratulations and clutches at Sherlock, whilst John hangs back, shadowed and tight lipped, confirms that Sherlock's decision to be absent was correct. He could never have stood by passively, witnessing this.

"Mary, John," Sherlock says in his best jovial voice. He is kissed by Mary, which is revolting, and shakes John's hand. John smiles and says something which does not even sound like words but Sherlock is not listening because he is observing, and he sees at least seven sleepless nights, and he smells the air freshener which Mrs Hudson rather optimistically spritzes around Baker Street, and he counts hurt in the lines around John's brave smile. It has progressed to physical infidelity, then. And John has moved out.

Sherlock grips John's hand in an echo of their farewell in Barcelona, and leans in, more than might be considered affectionately, but he does not care what Mary thinks, especially now, and says, "I'm glad you're here," close to John's ear. He feels an impulse to hug John, which is unusual for him as he is not given to altruistic displays of affection. Also, such an act presumes that John would draw comfort from it, and that might not be the case. It is too difficult to tell, with Mary watching Sherlock hungrily and John radiating despair.

Sherlock allows them to pass and take their seats near the back of the hall.

Although afternoon light shafts through the gothic arches windows along either side, torches have been lit, and discreet lanterns complete the effect, filling the giant space with a glow in a deliberately joyous golden colour. There are dark crimson plush seats set out in rows for the guests, and crimson silk drapes the table at the front in a way which suggests an altar. There are no chairs for bride and groom. "I do not require a throne," Sherlock told Liesl, almost his only input to the detail of this day. "I think we can stand upright for the ten minutes it will take to complete the deed."

Mycroft is at the front, curling his lip in disdain, with an aconite bloom in his buttonhole. A typically annoying Mycroft dig, especially since he obviously knew Sherlock would have to look up the meaning of aconite. Sherlock does not have a buttonhole. What would he choose? Perhaps a thistle, not so much for any superstitious meaning, but because it would prevent the keener guests getting too close.

Soon it is beginning. Music plays: selected by a person with the bizarre although useful job of planning the wedding, and approved by Sherlock. Everything else he cares little for, but he was not about to have a _film score_ as his wedding music.

Sherlock stands at the front, looking forward, ignoring the official who will conduct the ceremony, wishing he could turn round and watch everyone. He alerted Mycroft to the risk of attack, and Mycroft was disparaging because he predicted that and is now proven right, and also pleased, because he is slightly similar to Sherlock and relishes a certain level of danger for its variety from the norm, that is, the norm of almost total boredom.

Then Sherlock hears Liesl's cue music, and turns, and she is there. She looks beautiful, of course, dazzlingly happy, and Sherlock experiences in a burst his newfound need to be in physical contact with her. She reaches his side and he takes her hand and confirms that she is there, solid and real with clear eyes and glowing skin.

The official tuts as Sherlock kisses Liesl's cheek - some rubbish about being too soon - but Sherlock does not care. This opportunity could not be missed, and now, regardless of what happens next, he has got what he wanted.


	25. Oxygen

The bride is luscious in twelve metres of ivory silk by Caroline Castigliano and the groom wears a Savile Row suit of velvety black which makes his eyes seem very pale and bright. He has a gold pin in his lapel, and he is wearing a shirt with an elaborate ruffled collar (obviously not his decision). He is wearing a new, chunky watch. And the grey signet ring, John sees as Sherlock walks past.

Nobody gives the bride away and Sherlock has no best man. John is hurt but not as much as if someone else had done it and this is Sherlock and of course his wedding would be different.

Mycroft is there, in his pinstriped suit, inspecting his own watch which he then replaces in its fob pocket. He does not seem to be looking in John's direction but soon appears at his side, murmuring, "They'll make a handsome couple, Dr Watson. The groom is a vision as I know you'll agree - Mrs Watson," he adds, but the remark was directed at John. Then, leaning closer so that only John hears, Mycroft continues, "I advised against this particular step, John. So hard to untangle. But you know Sherlock. He can be very stubborn."

Mycroft gazes into John's eyes for a moment and John gets chills: the brothers have never seemed alike to him, but here is Mycroft teleporting information into John's brain just as Sherlock does, except that John cannot mind-read Mycroft and does not know what the message is saying.

"I hope he'll be happy," John says. He has already decided that if he gets the slightest, faintest hint from Sherlock that anything is wrong, then he will say something, do something, tell Sherlock ... something. He will act, anyway. He ought to have acted last winter, if only to ask what it was that Sherlock wanted. He will not allow Sherlock to make the mistake that he did. And if there is no sign that it is a mistake? Well, good, he supposes. Good for Sherlock. John does, in fact, want Sherlock to be happy.

"Oh, he will be," Mycroft says. "He usually gets exactly what he wants. Even if it takes longer than he wishes." He flicks a mysterious eyebrow at John, and glides away.

Mycroft takes his seat at the front, frowning archly, shaking hands with Sherlock as the congregation (_audience_, John corrects in his head) applauds at the end of the brief ceremony. Mycroft even, in a surreal moment, kisses the bride. Liesl purrs at him and he recoils, hiding it well but John sees and Sherlock must.

The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes. John could barely hear Sherlock's vows, although Liesl, professional actor, declared hers in clear sharp German.

John stands and claps with the rest as the bride and groom walk past but there is no eye contact, nothing, from Sherlock, and John is alone.

The guests and press mingle on the lawn in late afternoon sunshine while the bride and groom have their photograph taken in numerous configurations. When the guests are allowed back inside, there are white-draped tables around the edges of a gleaming wooden dance floor, a small orchestra at one end, and a very small top table which is in essence a table for two, plus Liesl's dress. Sherlock and Liesl have vanished after the photos, and a giggled rumour runs around the room that they are already stress-testing the bridal suite upstairs. John and Mary smile stiffly as this notion reaches their table at the back, and it is hard to know who is more uncomfortable.

They are, however, briefly united, in awe at the wedding. They marvel at the paired opulence and simplicity: no expense has been spared. (How? wonders John: Liesl is rich but Sherlock is not. Did he allow her to pay for everything?) The final effect of all the spending, however, is luxury rather than ostentation. Sherlock has style in spades, when he chooses to apply it. John thinks of him up to his elbows in entrails, or sitting at the kitchen table in a gas mask, wordlessly handing one to John as he arrives home, because Sherlock is concocting something which could theoretically, or actually, kill invisibly. And the disguises-! Sherlock and style are not synonymous.

The bride and groom reappear and take their places at their intimate table.

There is food – cured ham and pork and wurst of many artisan varieties, plus pale but delicious vegetable side dishes and creamy sauces. Neither Sherlock nor Liesl appears to eat. There are no speeches, but the couple stand at the end of the meal and silently raise their glasses to all in the room. Then the orchestra strikes up and Sherlock, smiling darkly, leads Liesl to the centre of the great hall.

The bride and groom dance slowly, to a piece which John recognises from an advert, and look ... happy. Liesl is glowing, and Sherlock is smugly satisfied. He holds her possessively, never leaving her side. His hand is on her constantly, John notices.

Mary looks as if she might faint, and John feels a little light headed too. He actually grins painfully at Mary, and feels a weird empathy, but not their former empathy born of love: this is spawned from their shared fascination with Sherlock. They watch him, Mary with her champagne flute against her mouth, John with one hand splayed flat on the table cloth. Sherlock moves smoothly and is certain of the position of his hands and feet at all times. Liesl clings to him, her bosom against his chest, and lets him lead. John watches Sherlock's elegant hands, forever in motion on the silk of Liesl's gown. He wonders if Mary is in the midst of some similar fantasy. A half-second glance at her parted lips and enlarged pupils is enough to know. She sees John looking and they share a moment of ... guilt, of confession. It is sick and wrong, but they are, to an extent, acknowledging this thing.

A queue of guests forms afterwards, organised by the staff, to congratulate the happy couple. John and Mary are near the back, with some of Liesl's acquaintance, giggling German women and their mildly embarrassed and openly lecherous husbands.

The Watsons are introduced and John find himself in the peculiar position of congratulating his best friend on a marriage John cannot believe is real, except that it does now appear to be so, while simultaneously trying to appear himself happily married, for the sake of the occasion, when he and his now ex-wife are completely aware that they are not.

Mary is entranced. She kisses Sherlock on both cheeks, hanging on him familiarly, Liesl too. Mary gasps her congratulations. Sherlock accepts Mary's kisses, looking at John with expressionless eyes.

John shakes Sherlock's hand and says, "You seem very happy."

"Of course," says Sherlock, giving him a hard stare - offended. "My wife."

John forces a smile at hearing that phrase in Sherlock's voice. "Those words take a bit of getting used to."

"I am already enjoying them," Sherlock says and puts his hand on Liesl once again, this time on her waist. She is engaged in platitudes with Mary, but glances at Sherlock with tolerant affection, matching his proud attachment. John reflects that it is hard to be pleased for others when your own relationship is in shreds.

"Well done," John says then, chiding himself for meanness when Sherlock has never shown him any. He embraces Sherlock, with many claps on the back, as Liesl is assaulted by Mary. "I'm glad for you."

But as John's cheek is close to Sherlock's he hears Sherlock hiss, "Don't be an idiot," and Sherlock's fingers dig painfully into John's shoulders.

Sherlock pushes John away before John can speak again, and turns to the next people in the queue.

* * *

John and Mary rejoin their table, and a waiter brings them champagne. Mary gulps at hers. John sips, it goes up his nose as it always does, and he requests a beer instead. Mary begins to jabber breathlessly about meeting Liesl and how she is not as thin as she seems in the photos, but how Sherlock is just _so, amazingly, unbelievably -_

- And John sees Sherlock disappear through a side door, and excuses himself abruptly, leaving Mary to swap superlative impressions with the German acquaintances.

John follows where Sherlock exited, and finds a corridor with two discreetly labelled restrooms. He goes into the Gents and Sherlock is there, alone, washing his hands very slowly in a marble lined room with low voltage lighting and gold taps.

John stands, the door closing behind him, and Sherlock lifts his gaze from the running water. Sherlock's eyes light up and his face grows momentarily young.

For a second, or seven, they gaze at each other. John sees Sherlock taking in his blue tux, the cufflinks, his hands, his feet in shiny black brogues. The armour-piercing look, except that it isn't deduction, just appreciation. Sherlock smiles, primarily with his eyelashes.

John elbows the restroom door, holding it shut.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

"I kissed you on my wedding day," John says. It was not where he meant to start but there it is.

"Don't kiss me on mine," Sherlock tells him, drying his hands on a fluffy white towel taken from a stack in a wicker basket. "My wife would kill you." But now he _is_ doing the laser look, the Sherlock scan, and John, for his part, can clearly see Sherlock's deeper breathing and darkened eyes.

"I feel like I - want to," says John. The truth, leaving his throat at last, feels like stepping from a smoke-filled nightclub into the cool moist air of a pine forest at dawn. Pure oxygen and calm. He leans back on the door in relief.

"Not here," Sherlock says at once.

John looks at him.

Sherlock rolls his eyes in disbelief. "For god's sake, the gents' toilets, what is this. Come outside."

They run up three flights of stairs and duck into a corridor.

John thinks Sherlock is going to kiss him, and his heart is beating faster at the thought, but Sherlock just hunkers down against a wall, runs his hand through his hair and says, "There is a reason for all of this which I will tell you very soon but for now please trust me and do what I ask when I ask it. Will you do that?"

"Of course," John says instantly. He crouches down in front of Sherlock. "What do you mean, what's going on?"

"You always say Yes before asking questions," Sherlock tells him. His lips curve upward for a second and John realises what has been missing from this wedding thus far: any kind of genuine smile from the groom. Sherlock has been acting, and only someone seeing him now, his expression warm and relaxed, could know that.

"There is a file which Mrs Hudson has," Sherlock says. "Open it, read it. There's a lot of nonsense with it, ignore all that, read the stuff in the blue file. Do you trust me?"

John sees the cleverness behind Sherlock's eyes, and the tough, defiantly isolated person behind that, who has never let him down. "Yes. You know I do. Are you all right, what can I do?"

Sherlock regards him seriously. "When I message you, as soon as you can, come and find me in a suitable place," he says. "That's all."

"Ok," says John.

Sherlock nods. "Good. Thank you." He frowns, massages his temples, then lets his hand drop.

He is obviously not going to make a move so John does. He puts his hand to the side of Sherlock's head and runs it down through his hair, soft curls parting around his knuckles, the heel of his hand stroking Sherlock's smooth cheek.

Sherlock shuts his eyes and sighs. He leans into John for less time than it takes John to process that fact and then pushes him away. "I can't tell you anything now," Sherlock says. Eyes open, moving away.

"You just did," says John. "And I didn't need that to agree to help you." It is true. Their friendship is older than this, is stronger than this, will outlive this.

John gives Sherlock his hand and raises him to his feet. "Congratulations," he says. "On your wedding day." Then he does kiss him, on the jaw, just below his right ear. Sherlock's skin is warm. He smells of tobacco and an unfamiliar spicy cologne. John never took the lead before, never showed what he wanted from Sherlock, and maybe that was one of his mistakes.

Sherlock stays frozen, gives no reaction at all. John accepts the disappointment. This is not the moment. But one day, he thinks, the moment will come.

Then John sees Mary over Sherlock's shoulder.


	26. Endless race

"Have you gone insane?" says Mary flatly when John finally discovers her.

He has been searching through crowds of wedding guests, elbowing past the astonishing number of security people (Mycroft or just celebrity paranoia?) and calling her name, ever since she ran down the stairs leaving John standing with his hand on Sherlock's shoulder and no way to pretend that Mary has not seen something which will send he totally off the rails.

He gave up on the house after ten minutes and came outside. It is cold. The moon has a yellow fuzz around it – there will be the first frost of autumn tonight. The castle grounds are extravagantly landscaped with little dells and hidden lakes and no obvious place for someone to escape to, and John is about to despair when he remembers the merry-go-round.

Mary is sitting on the steps of the caged carousel, her coat wrapped around her and a bottle of red wine, presumably pilfered from their table, beside her. Her glass is clasped between both hands and her knees are drawn up to her chin.

John stops in front of her, panting. He needs a moment to get his breath back. He also needs it to work out what the hell he is going to say. The truth, he thinks. Nothing but the truth.

They are far from the house and it is dark, just path-level uplighters and a circle of bulbs around the roof of the merry go round.

"It's not what you think," John says when he can speak and breathe simultaneously.

Mary gives him a pitying glare from the top step. "In that case, I'd love to know what you think I think."

John is no good at unpicking this kind of challenge. "Listen," he says. "What did you see?" He is thinking, _what did you hear?_ Sherlock's case is obviously secret, and Mary is the least discreet person on the planet when it comes to Sherlock.

"I saw you trying to kiss Sherlock, and him, unsurprisingly, shoving you away." She is scathing.

Thank God. "Mary –"

"John. Look where we are. It is his wedding. To a woman. Surely this is some kind of clue that he is _not gay_?" She gestures incredulously and wine slops from the glass onto the stone steps of the podium where the carousel sits stationary behind its railings and padlocks.

"I just kissed him," John says. "On the cheek. He is my best friend."

"I don't take my best friends up to lonely corridors to kiss them on the cheek," says Mary pointedly, and of course she is right.

"Mary –"

"You're unbelievable. His wedding day! My God." She heaves a sigh. "I mean, I thought you had it for him, but I never thought you would – " She stops. "Even I'm not that mad."

She reaches behind her. "Luckily I brought a second glass."

John stares. She tips the bottle and splashes Rioja into the goblets. The sound is incongruous out here. The wedding party continues, and its music can be heard when the breeze turns towards them. John strains to hear other signs of normality and hears wind in the trees, a plane going overhead.

"Cheers," says Mary. "What shall we drink to?"

John picks up his glass and cautiously sits beside her on the steps. Behind them in the dark, the wooden horses flare their painted nostrils and stretch out their legs in an endless race.

"Come on," Mary says impatiently. "What are we toasting? Marriage? Divorce? Not being gay?"

"No," says John, and raises his glass. "To Sherlock."

She lets out a laugh, but it is sorrowful. "You're right. To Sherlock."

They clink glasses, and drink.

* * *

"What happened?" asks John. They have moved, driven by the night's chill, back into the mansion and their room. Neither has the stomach for wedding celebrations, and for the first time in weeks, they are talking.

Mary reaches for the room-service wine, and John pours it. "I was desperate," she says. "He was controlling me. My ex."

John watches her. She is so delicate, so frail. He always saw it, but now he sees it in more than her fine hands and pale skin, more than her orphan eyes. He sees it in her hollowed chest, the tension stored in her wrists, the jaw which never quite unclenches.

"I needed someone to help me. I heard of Sherlock. I saw your blog. -Sherlock's website is impossible." She laughs, and it turns to a sob.

John nods.

Mary is curled up in the armchair by the coffee table, turning the stem of her wine glass round and round in her fingers. John is sitting on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, leaning towards her. Mary says, "I started reading about Sherlock. What he does. He works miracles."

"Yes," whispers John.

She smiles as a tear runs down her nose. "I knew I needed him. Just him. It didn't start like that. He was just a name. But soon – he just – you know-"

"I know." He found her scrapbooks, buried in the wardrobe, before he left. Pages and pages of Sherlock. They pre-date Mary coming to Baker Street with the case. And now John understands about the slender lawyer, and why Mary wanted John: because John was a way to be close to Sherlock after Sherlock rejected her. It is clear, too, why the ex boyfriend was so enraged when he saw Sherlock at his home, he and John trying to collect evidence of stalking.

John took a blade to the shoulder in January, and that wound was intended for Sherlock.

"Sherlock is so perfect," Mary says. "Perfect in every way."

"I wouldn't say that," says John. He thinks of Sherlock's insults, the way he can hurt with his withering assessment of everyone else's intelligence, the way he forgets you even when you are standing next to him because he is working, the way Sherlock does not _give,_ holding himself back from the affection that makes the world go round. Sherlock is hard. He refuses attachment. He is brittle, like a vase which has been left for a century on an attic windowsill; brilliant but fragile, dusty neglect coating the cracks in the glaze which might show the raw white pottery underneath. But sometimes, if you are privileged, he does allow you to see the cracks.

Mary gives John a look of pure distress.

"Sorry," says John. "I am not trying to rub it in."

"You had him," she says. "You let him go, how could you?"

"I never had him," says John. He tops up their glasses, even though this is not the world's best idea, and they drink. He has not told Mary any detail about last winter, but she knows. He thinks she has always known. "No one could own Sherlock, possess him. He may lend himself to you for a while. Maybe he will spend time with you, allow you to be near, even, be close."

She presses tissues to her eyes, her mouth, at the ideas that this brings.

John says, "But his mind works only to itself. He is his own secret. It is what makes him special, makes him impossible." He swallows. "It is what makes him my - friend."

She hands him a tissue but he just holds it in his fist.

"I'm sorry," says John. "I should have known, should have seen, should have realised that you needed –"

"Sherlock," she says.

"No," says John. "You needed me. As a doctor, as a friend, yes, maybe even as a man. But I just saw how beautiful you were, and you wanted me and I got carried away. I'm sorry."

Her mouth is quivering so much she cannot speak properly. She swallows, scrubs her face with the tissues, which are falling apart in claggy lumps onto the coffee table. "I'm sorry too," she says.

"I don't deserve this," says John, "but can we be friends? I mean that. I don't mean it as some sop, some excuse. I mean –"

"-You want us to form some kind of dissed-by-Sherlock club," she says, her mouth in a wry twist.

His shoulders drop."No. Not that."

"Yes that," she says, and pours more wine.

He sighs. Lets her put the glass in his hand. "You know I'm at Baker Street," he says.

She just looks at him. There is no fight in her eyes.

"Don't come there," he says. "If you want to see me, I'll come to you. Wherever. Any time. But please, don't come there."

"It's your place," she says, and she is crying again. "Yours and his. I love him!"

John says nothing. Drinks the wine. Is sad.

"Who can live up to him?" Mary asks. "Nobody."

I can, thinks John. I can be his equal. In the ways that matter between us, I always was.

John puts Mary into the double bed, and stands looking down at her. No make up. Hair a mess. Face covered in tears and nose-run. He rubs the bridge of his nose and feels his own tears, but it is too late for them now. She is still beautiful, but she does not love him, never really did. And he failed her utterly by failing to realise what was really happening in her head.

He takes off his wedding ring and puts it by her bed. He will be gone before she wakes up. He thinks about writing some kind of note – saying what? – and instead just leaves her flat's doorkeys beside the ring. She gets it. She knows him, and she is anything but stupid, and she gets it.

He settles back on the sofa, and as he lies there with the struts digging into his spine he considers Sherlock, and Liesl, and the acting, and the monumental thing that Sherlock has done for those good reasons he could not tell John about earlier. Sherlock, for those reasons, is now married, and this is his wedding night. It seemed unreal to John; the whole Liesl affair has always seemed unreal, and he was right. Yet Sherlock must – presumably – be doing some pretty real things in order to have made this work-?

How do you fake a marriage?

Perhaps that is a question John knows a little more about than he should.

Perhaps he should go to sleep. But first -

It is weird, he knows, but in the early hours John takes out his phone and sends a text to Sherlock's secret number. _Thinking of you. J x_

There is no reply. Hardly shocking. Still he is glad he sent it, even the kiss. Especially the kiss. He is finally being honest and whatever happens, it will be the result of truth.

And when he wakes up four hours later with a cricked neck and an autumnal draught chilling his body, he sees Sherlock's answering text:

_Me too. SH_

And then another one:

_Don't ask. SH_

John snorts. Sherlock. And that little exchange is probably the sweetest thing Sherlock has ever communicated to him. John has his bag packed and is ready to go, but finds he is standing smiling at his phone.

He goes downstairs and books a taxi back to the airport. He can sleep on the plane. And when he gets home, there will be a blue file, waiting for him.


	27. Nonsense

September in London means it is raining. The pavements are slippery with the first fallen leaves and the sky is sheet metal, occasionally glinting but mostly just solid opaque as if a container door has scraped shut across the world.

John pulls the door of 221B Baker Street closed behind him, checking that it is fully shut. He pulls his collar up on his coat and considers going back upstairs for a brolly: it did not look so bad from inside but at street level the gutters are brimming and wind is throwing bitter rain into his face. Standing, soaked, on a Tube full of other gently steaming people is one of life's less appealing facets. On the other hand, if he goes back now he will be late for work.

He takes a step into the street and sees a large black car nosing around the corner towards him. "Oh God. Today?"

Nonetheless when the car stops level with him he opens the door and gets in. At least it is warm and dry inside.

"Good morning, John," says Mycroft.

John leans back in the leather seats, keeping an eye on Mycroft's elegantly dressed bulk beside him. It has been less than a week since Sherlock's wedding but John is still buoyed up by hope that things will soon be better, much better, with Sherlock back in Baker Street, no Liesl, (no Mary) and the prospect of a different kind of adventure ahead.

"You've read the file," Mycroft says, his face turned towards the window.

Of course Mycroft knew about the file. Mycroft knew all along. "Yes," says John. "Pretty amazing stuff." A terrorist group with a hatred of the international financial systems, a mysterious source of money traced back to the production company of a successful actress, and plans to destroy the stability of the European Union with a devastating attack on the pan-European rail project, specifically, the new subalpine rail tunnel.

And one man able to get close enough to the group's financier to uncover it all.

Mycroft turns to John and looks his over. His languid expression belies the flicker of his eyes, like Sherlock's eyes. John has only recently noticed the similarities between the brothers. Family, he thinks. Ultimately, they are family. John feels a strange fleeting fondness for Mycroft, for being Sherlock's brother.

Oh, he has it bad. One quick chat at a fake wedding and an - ambiguous – text and John is imagining all sorts of futures, most of which are ridiculously soft-focus and utterly unlike anything he can truly imagine Sherlock enacting. But it has been good to dream, after months of what now feels like entrapment.

"You need a new lawyer," Mycroft says.

Bang goes that fondness. John gives Mycroft a narrow look. "You can't get divorced until you've been married a year," he says through gritted teeth.

Mycroft give a blink by way of a nod. "No, but you can put in place certain restrictions to prevent publication of, shall we say, damaging ideas." He purses his lips and raises his eyebrows at John.

Mary. Sherlock. Sherlock and John. "She wouldn't."

"Best to be sure, though, hmm? Just an idea. There are more pressing matters, however." Mycroft shifts in his seat and John sees something new in his face. Is it –fear?

"What's wrong," John says, cold clutching his chest. "Is it Sherlock?"

"Have you heard from him?" Mycroft asks.

"Not since the wedding," says John.

"His regular transmissions have ended," Mycroft says. "Two nights ago was our last contact from him. Did he say anything to you about his task?"

He does. "He told me about the file," says John. "And he wants my help. He said he would send a message and then I was to meet him."

"Where?" asks Mycroft.

"I don't know," says John. "I thought he would tell me where."

Mycroft frowns. "Then probably he has. Think, John. What did he talk about when you last spoke?"

There's a question John cannot easily answer. "Just – wedding stuff."

"You really should avoid falsehood, John," says Mycroft. "You haven't the face to carry it off. Did Sherlock say – or do – anything when you last met, which might be a clue as to his whereabouts?"

John shakes his head. "Where's Liesl?" he asks.

"En route to Switzerland to film the topping out ceremony at the tunnel," says Mycroft. "Enquiries confirm that Sherlock is not with her. Further enquiries suggest she is moody and upset. I was unable to speak with her. Her agent says she is unwell and needs to rest before filming. This seems unlikely."

"Sherlock says she never rests," John says. The file detailed a life of work, travel, and more work. Lies and Sherlock, relentless workaholics.

"My conclusion also. John, I must be frank. I am concerned. This group might seem soft – thus far it has all been about money and positioning. But their plan as you now know, is a deadly one, and they will be more than prepared to use force against anyone perceived as a threat."

"You're going to stop them, aren't you," John says. "The tunnel."

Mycroft hesitates. "A damage limitation plan has been put in place."

And here is the difference between Sherlock and Mycroft. Mycroft is cold. "You're going to let it happen," John says.

"These matters are not for you to worry about," Mycroft tells him. "You need to find Sherlock."

"There might be something in the file that I missed," John says. "I'll look." The part that scares him the most is that Mycroft does not know the answer, that Mycroft is coming to him for help.

"Yes," say Mycroft. "That's why I'm dropping you off here."

John looks up. The car has taken them in a loop back to Baker Street. "I'm supposed to be at work," he says to Mycroft. A request.

"That will be taken care of. Find the clue, John, and quickly. Sherlock needs us."

* * *

There is nothing in the blue file. John has read every word and there is nothing which is not clinical, bald, pertinent to the case.

John remains shocked by the microscopic detail of Sherlock and Liesl's life. Sherlock is efficient and thorough in recording it all, as John would expect, but it is disturbing to see a relationship dissected so exhaustively. How Sherlock seduced Liesl with conversation and lingering looks and dinners in impossible locations, how he would ignore her calls when working and allow her to become desperate to see him before contacting her. How she persuaded him to move in with her. How he proposed to her with a single diamond and no pleading. Their arguments and reconciliations – But also, the contacts from Liesl's network, the secret meetings with her manager Rudi who is not just her manager, the plans and weapons and the network of people prepared to kill to make their political point.

And then the most horrific part, to John: how Sherlock, helped by Mycroft's people, bugged everywhere, risking exposure every day. How he had to text from the shower to have any contact with Mycroft - or John. How he had to wear his Boyfriend face at all times and must never relax. How even the sex would undoubtedly be on tape. God, Sherlock must hate that.

John is not sure why he is so certain of this detail, but it strikes him that Sherlock would really hate being witnessed in his most intimate moments.

Of course the most intimate he has ever been with John is a kiss, and there have only been two of those... two proper kisses. One from Sherlock, one from John. But there were no witnesses.

And right now, there is no clue as to where Sherlock might be.

John's phone buzzes. He snatches it up to read the message. It is from Sherlock's secret number. _Now. SH_

No clue as to location.

John shoves the blue file aside. It was the only thing addressed to him. There is a large bundle of other correspondence, all addressed to Sherlock, envelopes bound with an elastic band.

John picks it up and rips off the elastic band. He has never opened anyone else's post before, but now, with Sherlock AWOL and in need, seems like the time to start.

He can hear Sherlock saying, _it's nonsense, ignore all that. _"Sorry," he says out loud. "Can't."

It is a bundle of postcards from all over Europe, each in its own envelope.

The envelopes are all addressed to Sherlock. The postcards inside are all addressed to John.

John slides out the first postcard. The date is the day after John and Mary's wedding. John sees Sherlock's looping handwriting, his bold, hard press of the fountain pen, confidence in every stroke, certainty and flourish in his initial.

_John. I miss you. S_

John pulls out the next card. It is dated the following day. Two days after the wedding.

_John. I miss you. S_

The next one, dated the following day, says the same. And the next.

There is a postcard for almost every day since May.

The messages are all different in small ways: different spacing of the text, different pens. The words are the same, more or less.

After a couple of weeks' worth John reaches one that just says, _I miss you._

And that continues.

A while after that – July – he arrives at a postcard which just says _John_. Nothing else.

Then, _John, I miss you. S _again.

Then one which says _It will be all right John. S_ John puzzles over the date and has to check his phone. It is the day he went to the Embankment, and found Mary with that man, and sent Sherlock the text about the camel.

Towards the bottom of the stack there is one which says _John. This is for you. S_

At this John has to stop and take breaths because he has been sitting, frozen, staring at the postcard -from Barcelona - and not understanding but knowing that it is, somehow, good. He looks at the picture – a standard view of the Sagrada Familia – but there is no clue there.

The last one is kind of a drawing. It is John's initials and Sherlock's entwined, in fancy font, and a date.

John catches his breath as he realises that the date is not John's wedding day. It is a day in the future. Twentieth of June, next year.

He is looking at the history of Sherlock's broken heart, and there is no bitterness or anger or jealousy, just endless sadness and longing and love.

John presses the final card, with its promise of a future, to his mouth, and closes his eyes.

Sherlock has hoped, imagined, has planned all of this, including some future time in which he and John are reconciled. He has even set a date, in his mind, for –what? A tryst?

John's eyes widen, seeing that word _tryst_, in his memory, in Sherlock's handwriting. A note tucked into John's honeymoon luggage.

_Come and find me in a suitable place._

A suitable place. Of course. John springs to his feet.

How soon can he be in Rome?


	28. Accumulated heat

The car is Italian, small and flimsy, and makes a noise like a bluebottle in a jam jar, but it gets John from the airport up the coast to the resort where he spent his honeymoon, what, five months previously. The weather was scorching then and flowers filled the fields and verges. Now the sun shines a more sober shade of gold and the grasses have paled into straw.

John parks the Punto in the tiny courtyard at the back of the hotel, cursing left hand drive as he edges the thing into a narrow space. He only has one bag, which he leaves in the boot.

He strides into the foyer and past the receptionist as if he is a guest, making straight for the tiled stairs. At the top is a blue carpeted corridor: he walks to its end and finds the narrow staircase which leads to the so called honeymoon suite, the tower room.

He knocks. No reply. He pushes the door and it opens. Worrying.

Caution silences him as he enters. A long black coat is draped over the kingsize bed, and John's heart leaps. But the room is empty.

He finds the padded wall panel which is really a door, and opens it. The stairs behind it are bathed in sunlight: the door at the top is open. Someone has gone up onto the roof.

John climbs carefully, quietly. Sherlock vanished from Liesl's entourage without a word, and his only contact has been to ask John for help. John is prepared to meet a hostile welcome at the top of the stairs. He has no weapon, only readiness and Greg's magic number dialled into the phone in his hand.

He reaches the top - the cracked paving slabs visible from this viewpoint are empty. It is warm up here but there is a fresh breeze which ruffles his hair as he steps onto the roof and looks around.

For a moment he is disappointed, dazzled by the bright light, and the roof is an empty glare.

Then his eyes adjust and he sees Sherlock standing, hands in pockets, by the parapet looking out over the golden town, dressed in his black suit and shoes, with the wind tugging at his hair.

John walks over and stands beside him. The roofs below are made of curved tiles like sections of terracotta pipe laid in wobbly rows, and they throw back the accumulated heat of months of Italian sun.

"Good," says Sherlock without turning. "You're here."

"Yes," says John. Of course he is here. The last postcard is in his jeans pocket. The rest are in his memory, forever. And even if he had not found them, Sherlock asked, and John will always answer yes.

Sherlock says, still staring out at the view, "We've got to go. What car have you got?"

"Fiat Punto."

"Then we'll take mine." At last Sherlock turns to face him. John sees exhaustion in his shadowed eyes, and pain held taut around his mouth. But he seems serene, at last. The Liesl part of his mission is over.

John stands steady, staring at Sherlock, taking him in. He is free to look. No-one, now, has the right to question why he would want to gaze like this at the man who is his best friend, who is married even as he himself is still married, who means everything to him. John looks, drinks him in, deduces many things about the perilous state of Sherlock's health, but the veil is drawn across and he cannot read what is in Sherlock's heart.

Sherlock is looking too. John sees the flicker down to where his wedding ring used to be, the up at his face. He is checking, but seems more concerned than calculating. He claps John on the shoulder reassuringly, then again in encouragement. Time to go.

They hurry back down the stairs, Sherlock picks up his coat, and soon John is in the courtyard again, watching as Sherlock rapidly extracts a large grey Audi from between the Punto and the wall. When there is room, John opens the passenger door and gets in. "The tunnel?" he says to Sherlock.

"Yes. Mycroft's plan for damage limitation did not quite match my own." Sherlock drives with his whole body - hands alert on the leather-bound wheel, head turning back and forth continuously as his eyes register all road data, long legs shifting as he depresses clutch, accelerator and, rarely, brake. John has seen Sherlock drive only a handful of times, and like most things mastered by Sherlock, it is impressive.

Within minutes they are on the main road, heading out of town.

* * *

"I thought something had happened to you," John says, unfolding the roadmap as Sherlock scowls at the traffic.

"It did," says Sherlock. He tolerates the queue for a bit and then boots the Audi through a gap and overtakes the lot, slamming back into the queue as an articulated lorry approaches on the opposite carriageway. "Rudi found a bug in the bedroom. Luckily I was listening to it at the time. I came down and he accused me in front of Liesl. Bit awkward." He speaks rapidly, his typical dissemination of only the vital parts. "I told them the truth, that it was Mycroft trying to keep tabs on me but Rudi didn't believe me, not surprisingly."

He punches controls on the Audi's complicated dashboard. Satnav appears. John puts away the map. Sherlock drums his fingers on the wheel and says, "They were very direct in the end. Rudi produced a gun and put it to Liesl's head. Told me to tell the truth or he'd kill her."

He stops and clenches the wheel, biting down on his lip. Resumes the drumming. "I collapsed in tears, begged them not to hurt her, told them to call Mycroft and explain about his stupid paranoia, told them anything I thought would work, and eventually Rudi put down the gun."

He draws his fingertip over the satnav, enlarging the display of their destination. "Then I escaped," he says casually, eyes firmly on the road ahead.

"How?" asks John. When Sherlock omits detail it is never a good sign.

Sherlock gives a mouth shrug. "Pretended to run and comfort Liesl, got Rudi instead. Clocked him with the gun and left." He sighs. "Told Liesl she was the only things that mattered to me, not to believe them, et cetera et cetera. That's important," he adds, glancing at John. "She has to believe I am nothing to do with the mission to expose her."

"Right," says John. "Mycroft said she was unavailable. Rudi gave him some story about her being unwell."

Sherlock looks unhappy. "They'll have her locked up somewhere. They need her for the final plan, but she's in serious danger as soon as her part is complete." There is pain around his eyes every time he speaks her name.

John says, "Don't forget she's one of them."

"I know!" Sherlock snaps. He overtakes again with vicious acceleration.

"It's her risk to take," John says more gently. "She clearly knows what she's doing."

"She must not be harmed," Sherlock says. He turns his head to John. "Do you understand? She must not be harmed."

John looks at the pale fingers gripping the wheel. "Sherlock," he says, conscious that a speeding car is not the best place to broach something delicate, "Are you OK?"

"I'm fine," Sherlock says coldly. "Please do not lecture me on becoming emotionally compromised. It is irritating enough when Mycroft attempts it."

"I'm not going to. I'm just reminding you that Liesl is not one of the good guys." The file detailed her bizarre convictions and graphic descriptions of what violence would be needed to execute the group's plan.

"Your job is to get her out," Sherlock says. "Put her in the car, drive her away. She will resist. Ignore it. Put her in the boot if necessary. Just get her away from the tunnel."

The Italian countryside flicks past in pillar trees and last-minute junction signs.

"OK," John says. Where will Sherlock be, he wonders.

Sherlock sighs out a long breath. "Liesl must not be hurt," he says. "In any way, John. No matter what she does, what she says, she must not be hurt. If she tries –"

He stops and swallows. John stares at him curiously. Is he – choking-?

"She might try to hurt herself," Sherlock says in his usual abrupt way again. "I don't know. She's very efficient. And she's going to be upset. But do not let her, all right? Do you understand?" He is staring at John and not, apparently, at the road.

"Yes. Yes! Christ, I've got it. The road, Sherlock!"

"All right." Sherlock turns his eyes back to the stream of traffic all around them.

There is silence in the car. John looks closely at Sherlock. "Wouldn't you be better off being the one to get her out?" he asks. "She knows you, trusts you."

"She wouldn't if she saw me trying to prevent her doing the thing she wants. So no," he replies.

"Right."

"Don't question me on this, John. I have spent too long, invested too much in this to stand being doubted." His tone is strained.

"I'm not doubting you." Sherlock has a plan. He must have a plan, because he always does. Whatever it is, John will go along with it. And he has resources of his own, should he think that Sherlock needs extra help.

"Good." Sherlock sounds affronted rather than pleased, though.

John stares out of his window and rubs his hand over his face. After a while he feels a touch on his left shoulder. He looks across and sees Sherlock gazing at him. As their eyes meet, Sherlock gives a grimace of acknowledgement and then returns his attention to the road. That is basically an apology in Sherlock terms. John relaxes.

"When I've got Liesl," he says. "Where do I go?"

"Look in the glove box," says Sherlock. "I drew a map while I was waiting for you."

John gazes at him for a long moment, until Sherlock says, "What?" and looks round, curious.

"You make a good secret agent," says John. It is sort of joke, but not.

Sherlock barks a laugh. "No," he says. "I don't have the patience."

John thinks of the postcards, every day, for months. He says nothing, but reaches his left hand out and touches Sherlock's knee.

"John," says Sherlock, frowning and moving his leg aside. "Not while I'm _driving_."

John withdraws his hand, then splutters laughter. After a moment Sherlock starts grinning too. "Too ridiculous," says John.

"Situation normal," says Sherlock.

"God, I missed you," says John. He looks at Sherlock, but Sherlock is focused on the road, his face set, and there is no reply. John finds the map in the glove box and studies it, and Sherlock takes them north towards the border.


	29. Mirror

"Mind the wall."

"I can drive, Sherlock."

"Yes, and yet you choose not to. The wall!"

John yanks on the handbrake and throws the car into neutral. He switches the engine off and sits getting his temper back. Sherlock is the world's worst backseat driver, except he is not in the backseat, he is right next to John checking his mirrors for him and opening his mouth every time he thinks John is about to make a manoeuvre without the same efficiency (recklessness) that Sherlock would.

The Audi is tucked against a dry stone wall with thrift spurting from its crevices, pink pompom flowers above dark green spikes of grassy leaves. The sun is in its last flash and mauve twilight is settling across the abandoned construction site close to the spot where the tunnel completion ceremony will take place. The early evening is quiet. Swallows dive at the car, plucking flies from the air in their deadly beaks.

John realises that he will have to get out on Sherlock's side because he has parked right up against the wall. He sighs. "Right," he begins.

"Thank you for coming," Sherlock interrupts, looking down at his phone. "I knew you would. But thank you."

John is silenced. Sherlock is scrolling through nothing on his phone, his hair falling forward over his cheeks. His shoulders are tensed.

There have not been many thank yous between them. There ought to have been. Not just for making the tea, or recalling that a washing machine needs to be both loaded and switched on; not just for shooting someone to save one life, or feigning death to protect many, or appearing, always, at the very last moment with something brilliant to do or say which will solve the problem and save the day. No - there should be thank yous just for existing, because certainly Sherlock's existence is pretty magical to him, and the postcards told John what he should have known all along, that Sherlock values him too, enough to write it every day.

"Any time," John says softly. His heart is beating rapidly. His breathing picks up as he looks at Sherlock, so intent, so alone through all of this year.

If you're going to do it, just do it. Action, not dithering, and not hanging around for the world's least demonstrative man to give you a sign.

Sherlock gives an upwards nod at John's words, biting his upper lip and still focused on that phone.

John puts his right hand on the side of Sherlock's seat and leans across him, bringing his other hand around to grip the door handle. Sherlock looks up in surprise and John kisses him.

Sherlock's mouth is warm, his lips dry, slightly sunburned skin. His skin smells of the hotel soap from the honeymoon suite, and tobacco, and sweat. John kisses him, just a touch of their mouths, but all of John's want and hope is in that small contact and Sherlock's eyes are wide. He doesn't flinch or turn his head away but glimmers, as he used to, lying on the sofa for John to kiss when he came home from work. John kisses the corners of his mouth, top lip, bottom lip, then parts Sherlock's lips with his own and presses his tongue into Sherlock's mouth, tasting the coffee they had when they switched drivers, tasting hesitation and surprise.

Sherlock's hands come up and hold his head, fingers in John's short hair, drawing lines down into the nape of his neck, and the kiss is returned, slow caress, Sherlock breathing shallowly and still staring at John with eyes gone suddenly darker blue. Every move is tentative and uncertain, but so welcome, and desire is running through John's veins in an instant, suffusion from scalp to fingertips and knees and ankles and every part in between. Sherlock is open and pale and disbelievingly kissing him back, that restraint which makes John want to drag Sherlock wholly into him, to possess every bit of him, to never let go of him except that the restraint is fear and hope as well as iron control and that sends signals to the other part of John, of fierce care and regret.

John breaks the kiss and strokes Sherlock's temple with his thumb and swings across the car so that he is kneeling over Sherlock, straddling him really, his thighs either side of Sherlock's, solid muscle through Savile Row wool and Next denim. John wraps his arms around Sherlock's shoulders and presses his face into Sherlock's thick curls.

Sherlock takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. John leans back to look at him.

"I suppose that's why I don't thank you more often," Sherlock says, and his voice has a tremble in it even though he is clearly trying for nonchalance.

John leans down and kisses him again and this time Sherlock is right there with him, hands on John's shoulders, then his waist, then down over his jeans, gripping his bottom with hard fingers. John says, "Oh god," and has his hands in the collar of Sherlock's shirt, unbuttoning so that he can ravish that pale neck.

"Stop," says Sherlock as John's fingertips touch his throat. "Stop, stop." He writhes free and holds John away from him. His face is flushed and he is panting a little, his eyes still dark.

John sits back - no way would this have been possible in the Punto - and waits.

"I can't," says Sherlock. He runs his hands through his hair, messing it up even more than John has already. "I need to concentrate. I have to concentrate and I can't. Not with you so beautiful -"

He grips John's neck and drags him down for another kiss, hard on the lips, then presses his forehead to John's as John hears,_ beautiful_, in Sherlock's voice, again. Dizziness clutches John.

Sherlock lets go, takes a deep breath. "Liesl," he says.

"What?"

"Liesl. Everything with her - it's not real. Remember that."

"Ok," says John. He swallows. He has seen the file, has read it, but that is not the same as hearing it.

"Don't _cry_," says Sherlock.

"I know. Snivelling, very unattractive." John sniffs and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. It was only one tear. Just stress.

"Also Liesl is unlikely to let a sobbing man rescue her." Sherlock reaches up hesitantly to brush at John's cheek with his thumb even though the tear is already gone.

John laughs. He kisses Sherlock again lightly, feels as if he will never be able to stop. "I left her," he says, holding up his bare left hand.

"I know. Before you came to Germany." Sherlock's wedding ring gleams gold in the twilight.

"Yes. Because of you," John adds. Best to be clear.

Sherlock takes John's hand, turns it over, kisses his palm. "We need to focus," he says. "Forget all this. I'll go to the tunnel and you get Liesl. She is not to be harmed," he adds. "We need her."

"Ok."

"Bring her to the cameras. Make sure she's on film, visibly here and taking part. She will probably make some melodramatic speech. Wait til she incriminates herself and then grab her. Bring her here. Drive off."

"Got it. Where will you be?"

"Busy," says Sherlock.

John takes Sherlock's hand, finds the agate ring. "Be careful," he says. "I want you back at the end of this."

Sherlock makes a sound John cannot interpret. "Back," he says on an upwards note, then waves his hand, dismissing it. "Let's go."

They stare at each other for the space of five heartbeats and then Sherlock pushes open his door and they slowly part and wriggle out of the car.

* * *

A bomb is not a clean, neat, thing. It is not like a firework or a popped balloon: mostly noise with a bit of air rushing past your face if you're too close. A homemade bomb is a murderous force with no defined parameters. The blast may emerge from one side or another of the device, or the entire thing may disintegrate. There may be items inside, such as nails or other hard, sharp objects intended to add torture to the payload. Even if not, the force of the explosion will certainly rip clear plenty of debris to soar through the air quicker than you can see and deliver shredded flesh and lost eyes and torn off legs or arms with the blast.

He has never worked on bomb disposal; never driven out in a country road of dust and dry heat to unpick an IED while his friends look on, wondering if this is the last view anyone will have of him. He admires those men and women, the sheer guts of it, to approach a suspected bomb and lie there in just some inadequate blast suit, trying to make it not go off as you work in the blazing heat and suffocating musty air inside your stinking helmet.

He has seen plenty of bomb damage, of course. In his line of work, impossible to avoid. The damage done to buildings and infrastructure is impressive, but the devastation inflicted on flesh is truly horrific. A human body remains intact through terrible stresses, falls and fights and dreadful car accidents. Despite these traumas, a body remains identifiable as a body. But in bomb wounds, legs disappear as if the tendons and bones are overcooked spaghetti. Nothing could repair such vicious invasions, and where a person is close to a device when it goes off, then sometimes, in some cases, there is almost nothing left.

He is not going to try to defuse the device. He is not that stupid. But he is going to attempt to kill the detonator and gain more time for all parties to be caught in the act. And that might make him just as foolish, and if it goes wrong, just as dead.

No. He must not die. Not now, not with so much life to come, not so soon after their reunion when there is promise and hope and everything, everything to live for.

Sherlock grimaces - no sense in waiting and every second brings Mycroft's men closer - and crouches beside the detonator, looking for its power supply.

* * *

John is outside the Portakabin where Liesl is locked up. He is not best pleased at being relegated to wife rescue duties, but Sherlock has convinced him that if any of the group saw Sherlock, they would abort the attack.

"This has to be done quickly," Sherlock declared. "Just do it, let Liesl get in position and then when you see Mycroft's people, get her out."

"Yes, what will those people look like again?"

"Shadowy figures with guns telling you to put your hands on your head or die." Sherlock spoke casually, while retrieving a small but obviously heavy bag from the boot of the Audi. Not a word to John about what was in it.

"Right. Got it." Great.

"Just get her in the car and I will meet you at the gate. You'll know when I'm on my way."

"How?"

"You'll know," Sherlock said vaguely, thus informing John perfectly clearly that it would be dangerous and that John would never let him do it if he knew what it was.

Now John has to break an enraged Liesl out of a Portakabin. This job never gets dull.

But first -

He pulls out his phone. _Sorry about this Sherlock. And Mycroft. But you are each so caught up on your own hidden agendas that you have forgotten about the real risk of death in this situation._

John scrolls through his phone, listening to the sounds of Liesl trashing a portable office building on the other side of the door. She seems to be trying to smash the walls with a chair.

John swivels round so he can see the phone better in the bright sunlight. Ah, there it is...

He will fetch Liesl in a moment, and do everything Sherlock asks. Of course he will. But first, and especially because Sherlock is obviously about to attempt something stupid and dangerous, he is going to dial Greg Lestrade's magic number.

* * *

"Who are you?" Liesl demands in German as John forces open the door.

He shuts it quickly behind him and stands, squaring up to her. "Friend of Sherlock. He asked me to get you out. Said they wouldn't let him see you."

Liesl sinks into a chair, springs up again. "Thank God," she says in English. "Take me to him. No - take me to the stage."

"Sherlock said you'd want to get on with your job," John says. He unties Liesl's hands. "He also said not to let you get hurt."

She mutters something, grudgingly but fondly.

"Put this on," John says, producing a baseball cap from his pocket. "I'll take you round to the stage."

Liesl looks him up and down. "You were at that apartment," she says. "The flatmate."

"Yes. Sherlock's friend. I was at your wedding." Her gaze is disconcertingly focused. Like Sherlock's, John thinks with a shiver. She is like a mirror of him, blonde where he is dark. Same sharp brain, same ruthlessness. But Sherlock would never plan a deadly bombing, and Liesl is not clever enough to realise that her marriage is a sham.

_I was kissing him half an hour ago_, John thinks. _Tongues and gasps and hands sliding down towards the backs of jeans._ This cheers him up greatly. "Let's go."

"I don't think so," says a new voice, and John turns to see a slim neat man with mostly-plucked eyebrows, standing in the door of the Portakabin holding a pistol.

Liesl shrieks and launches herself toward him with a stream of angry words which begins with _Rudi_.

Rudi lifts the pistol and John steps in front of Liesl and is winded as she hurtles into him. He grabs her and through sheer force of will gets her to stand still, his hands on her shoulders, as he positions himself again between her and Rudi. The whole manoeuvre took three seconds.

"Who are you?" Rudi asks. John is disappointed to note that he seems calm. It is much better if your opponent can be rattled. The calm ones retain control longer, long enough to out-think you, to plan, to decide in advance how they will hurt or kill you.

It takes surprise out of the equation, unless it is your surprise, and that is not good.

Liesl speaks. "A friend," she says in German. "A truer friend than you." She spits on the floor, revolting, but it draws Rudi's eye and John notices. Liesl is ignoring John, but in a very specific way, a way John is rather familiar with. He checks her with a quick glance. Yes. She is challenging Rudi with a bold stare and belligerent stance and loud voice, and all the while keeping John in peripheral vision. Waiting for him to act.

"You are not one of us," Liesl declares and tosses her head. "You are scum!" She stamps her foot, Rudi's attention is sucked down to the floor for a split second, and John steps forward and takes the gun.

Liesl laughs as John forces Rudi to lie face down on the floor with his hands behind his head. She ties him up with her own scarf.

"You told me you speak German," she says in English as they stride across the parking lot, her baseball cap on and Rudi's gun in John's waistband.

"Yes," says John. He told her, that day in Baker Street. He had not thought she was listening. She is watching him and again John has unsettling déjà vu. Her eyes are even paler blue than Sherlock's and she is powerful, just like he is. Right now John knows that she is trying to work him out, assess the situation.

It's not real, he reminds himself, because with every second a partnership between Sherlock and this woman becomes more plausible.

"Where is my husband?" Imperious tone.

"Far away." John hopes. "He said to take you to the stage. Let you do what you wanted."

Liesl stops and grips John's arm. "He knows what we are going to do," she says. "He has deduced it. Yes?"

"Probably," says John. "He hasn't talked to me about that. It was just about you." This is true.

"What about me?" she demands.

Is this ego? Or building evidence for deduction? "He told me about twenty times that I have to keep you safe." It is becoming clear that Liesl is not someone who can be kept safe. She is walking danger, and that is before you consider that she is involved with an extremist group who plan an explosion.

They are approaching the roped off area of seats where a nicely-dressed audience is waiting to be live on television, watching as the various international dignitaries congratulate each other on the completion of the tunnel.

Liesl takes off the baseball cap and smooths her hair. She hands the cap to John, stepping briefly close. "You were in Barcelona," she says. "You sent me a text from his phone."

How does she know?

John must have revealed amazement because she says, "You signed it SH. He never does that." Before John can think about this she adds, "You spent the night with him."

"He was tired. He slept," says John, but he is palpitating.

"Is that all it was?" she asks bluntly. "Because I have a very good nose, and I can smell my husband on your skin."

They are at the cordoned off area, facing each other.

"He never mentioned you," she tells him. "Not once. But when we did the wedding list and I questioned your name, he said, _Non negotiable_. And he risked a very important date in Barcelona saying it was for work, yet there was no case worthy of his mind within a hundred kilometres. I knew he had been with someone. And when your husband has an affair it is always with the person he mentions the least."

John has no idea what to say to this. He is not about to start denying things. He has no idea what Sherlock has ever said to Liesl.

"When this is done, you and he are finished," Liesl says. "I do not share. He will accept this."

John stares. Pride pricks him into a response. "He is my friend," he says. "And I don't think I share either."

Liesl's hand shoots out and smacks John in the face. He catches her wrist immediately afterwards, but the slap bloody hurt. She is a strong woman and does not shrink from violence. "He is on your skin," she hisses into John's face. Spittle sprays from her lips. "Whatever you did to him, whatever you tried to persuade him into, remember he is mine and you are just some idle impulse which has caught his attention for a moment."

John lets go of her wrist. "He is his own person" he forces out, "and if you knew him then you would know that no one can persuade him unwillingly into anything."

Liesl exclaims shrilly and people turn and recognise her. Instantly she is smooth faced and smiling. "There are more important things here," she says. "I now have a job to do."

"Sherlock said to go with you." As much as he wants to ditch her, he must do what has been asked of him.

"Fine. Look official. And remember you are nothing to me or my people."

John takes this as a threat. He follows her around the edge of the seating area and to the stage as she is recognised and allowed through the cordon.


	30. Ongoing thunder

The mountainside is a dim purple beyond the bright lights of the ceremonial stage. The tunnel entrance is lit, lights directed into the tunnel as well as its own arch of lights around the opening. The rows of chairs in front of the stage are full of murmuring people, and the cameras are in position. Liesl's company has exclusive rights to film this ceremony and she is everywhere checking, organising, snapping commands through a smile. She is wearing a lemon yellow skirt suit, unrumpled despite her exertions in the Portakabin, and exudes power. Her colleagues give her uncertain looks: clearly they were expecting Rudi, not Liesl.

John is on edge, keeping watch from below the stage, waiting to get the proof that Sherlock wants so he can get Liesl and leave. He is also waiting for Sherlock to appear. He was going to the tunnel, with a bag. That's all John knows.

The ceremony begins- a local mayor standing at the lectern with a sheaf of notes, and cameras rolling closer to get the shot of his face.

Liesl is off to the side close to John, with her own camera - a smaller, lighter piece of kit than the monsters pointing at the main stage - giving translation and some commentary. John admits that she is extremely talented. It is almost a pity she is a terrorist.

He scans the scene, looking, as ever, for trouble. If Mycroft's agents are here, they are disguised as guests or else hiding. The VIPs in the front row have a lot of dark-suited friends sitting or standing nearby who seem as nervous as John. Security.

Sherlock will be at the tunnel now, dodging Mycroft and Rudi's people and, John imagines, trying to do something with a deadly device which experts with years of training would hesitate to approach.

This is why John told the cold-voiced man who answered Lestrade's magic number, to concentrate on the tunnel, and retrieving Sherlock. Sherlock will be furious, but John will worry about that later. A bomb is bad enough. A bomb which has been tampered with is an uncontainable situation.

It is hard to get a clear view of the stage because of all the cameras. Liesl seems determined to get every possible angle: there appears to be two of everything.

Liesl looks at her phone. Checking time. Adrenaline floods John. It will be soon but what? At least she is far from the tunnel and the bomb.

He shifts around, trying to remain close to Liesl, trying to see past the stupidly doubled-up cameras. Why do you need so many cameras just for this rather dry celebration of digging a hole?

Then it hits him. You don't. You do not need as many cameras as are here, pointing at the audience as well as the tunnel entrance.

He pulls out his phone and texts Sherlock. _Weapons in cameras here. Get out of the tunnel. J_

He presses Send.

No reply.

Liesl is climbing up onto the stage now, shaking hands with the mayor who has finished his speech, preparing to interview him about the marvellous achievement of the tunnel builders.

_Sherlock it is going to be now get out J_

There is a crump from the hillside behind and John's heart goes cold. The impact is visible in a cloud of dust and particles flying towards them; audible as a low rumble, no single bang but ongoing thunder. The ground shudders.

In the moment's silence which follows the first sound, Liesl begins a speech into her camera smiling triumphantly and sweeping her arm around to indicate the collapse of the hillside behind her. All other cameras are swinging round to point wholly into the faces of the dignitaries, rows of guests in business suits whose faces are just turning, as the explosion ripples through the air, from smug and relaxed to fear and horror.

Training surfaces. John vaults onto the stage and grabs Liesl. She is screaming into the microphone in hysterical German and swipes at him but John was prepared for resistance and twists her arm up her back and kicks her legs out from under her and carries her off the stage even as she claws and jabs with her high heels and bites and spits in his face.

He drags her through the screaming audience as chairs are overturned and security men hustle their charges away. Liesl rears up in his arms and tries to headbutt John and John ducks away and grips her even harder, thinking, Sherlock does not count bruising on the list of things which are not allowed to happen to her. He is also thinking that the flippant idea of transporting her in the boot of the Audi is starting to look like the practical option.

Where was Sherlock when that explosion went off?

Strobing judders whip through the sky. John looks up and sees helicopters. They are swinging along the valley towards the tunnel entrance site, and they are navy blue with white lettering. Police, in most languages. A man appears at the open door of the nearest helicopter with a megaphone. His words are distorted, and John ignores him as he wrestles Liesl towards the car.

Now he can see Mycroft's team. While most of the additional dark suits have been occupied with removing the VIPs from the scene, some have remained behind and are rounding up Liesl's production crew. There are yells and tussles and efficient pinnings-down at gunpoint. Then John feels, rather than sees, the attention shifting toward him and Liesl.

"Come on!" he grunts at Liesl. "I'm meant to get you out of here whether you want to go or not-"

She spits at him in thick German. He catches _Traitor_, _Scum_, and _Bastard_, many times.

"Not interested," he says. The Audi is nearby now. "Just – get – in -"

The keys are in his pocket. He cannot get them without releasing Liesl. As he pauses beside the car, Liesl makes a surge for freedom, wrenching on John's arms around her.

Men with guns rise up from behind the Audi and tackle them both to the ground and the last thing John says before they gag him is, "She must not be harmed."

He is handcuffed and searched and Liesl is taken away by two big men towards a landing helicopter and then John is too and the helicopter takes off and as it rises, the mountain can be seen. The bomb has taken a massive bite out of its slope, a jagged maw billowing dust, and all John can think of is, Sherlock, Sherlock, no.


	31. Almond scented night

It ought to be boring - hours of solitude, a blank room, a plastic jug of water and a plastic cup. After around two hours - they have taken his phone and watch - a silent policeman brings him a tray with pasta, tomato sauce, cheese, bread and a carafe of red wine. When he has eaten that, forcing his body to refuel even though he has little interest in the food, they return his belongings and he does not hear the door being locked as that police officer leaves.

He has not been bored for a second because he has been worrying the entire time, his brain turning over multiple possibilities after the events at the tunnel. He has no idea what happened to Liesl, although he must assume that Mycroft's people have her. The people holding him, though - they do not work for Mycroft.

When they first captured him he demanded to know who they were, and received no reply. Deduction en route to this industrial-looking police station on the edge of a large (Italian? presumably) town, has led him to believe they are independent from Mycroft, acting on separate orders, most likely, the result of his own intervention earlier...

In any case, the bomb went off, and he strongly suspects that this was Mycroft's plan: allowing the carnage to happen. Mycroft has rarely shown interest in reducing the human cost of his secret actions. Not never – but rarely. But when Sherlock is involved, surely, surely, there would be moderation?

He notes, with some hope, that he receives increasingly nice treatment as the hours progress. At first they threw him in here with no personal possessions and no shoes. He recognises that: a mild form of dehumanisation, intended to weaken the prisoner.

After a while they gave him the jug of water.

He sat, purposefully resting because it is late, now fully night by his estimation although this room has no windows, and trying to flatten out the kinks in his mind which jump from awful possibility to horrendous likely outcome. Thinking this way will not help.

He has done too little thinking lately and it has led to all sorts of trouble. From now on there will be careful consideration of every action. Even in the car, tonight – what was he thinking? He was not, is the answer, and he knows it. He let love carry him away, and while in isolation that would be OK, it was the wrong moment for it tonight, when focus was required.

This will be the beginning of thinking. What happened in the car was good – but in the future –

Of course he does not know if there will be a future. No one will tell him anything about what happened in the tunnel.

This causes him pain and he sits wincing and gaining control of himself so that whenever they come to release him, as they surely must, he is not sitting in a corner blubbing.

He wishes he knew what was going on.

He supposes he hopes that Liesl is all right. She is obviously important.

He has reached this grudging conclusion when they bring him his phone and watch, and his shoes.

He gets up and goes to the (now unlocked) door. "Hello?" Beyond is a bright, bleak corridor. Fluorescent lights in the ceiling, concrete floor. Doors, with wired glass windows, at either end.

He tries in Italian and German, and after a few moments a man in a suit with a gun holster under his jacket appears, flashes his badge and says, "You sir. Name please."

"John Watson," he says. "Where is Sherlock Holmes?"

"Come with us please."

John texts as he walks. _Sherlock, where are you? J_

The message comes back instantly. _John thank god. I will see you shortly. S_

John draws breath in and stops sharp for a second. The striplights overhead seem to flicker, the concrete beneath his feet to jolt like the explosion all over again. But it passes and he walks on, his phone in his hand.

_Sorry about Interpol_, he texts. _Lestrade gave me their number. J_

This leads to a pause, then, as John is led along more corridors with peeling paint and a smell of bleach, _Probably just as well, I had no idea what I was doing with the bomb. S_

John bursts out laughing, and the Italian policeman frowns.

"In here. Observe only please. No interaction."

John is led to a room similar to the one where he waited all those hours. The policeman comes in too, and locks the door behind them. The room is bare and scraggy like the corridor. There is a chair in the middle, and on it, handcuffed, still in her lemon yellow suit, is Liesl Messernacht.

She sees John and blood drains from her face. Fear. But then she lifts her chin proudly and ignores him. She is strong.

"Is this the person you were trying to remove from the crime scene?" asks the policeman.

John nods.

"Thank you." But he makes no move to send John away, or accuse him of anything.

The door is unlocked. It swings open and Sherlock appears in his black suit, dusty and rumpled. His hair is slicked back from his face as if he has just thrown water over it. He rushes past John and goes straight to Liesl. He wraps his arms round her, calling out in German, checking her face, her hair, running his hands all over her, never ceasing the flow of questions and exclamations. John hears, "My God, what have they done to you? Tell me you are not hurt," but most of it he cannot catch.

He watches Sherlock and Liesl, Sherlock's attentions to her, his caresses and tender enquiries, and thinks, this is not real. He has to concentrate. Sherlock has fooled this woman. But John has seen Sherlock's true face. This is not real.

Liesl answers in rapid German, bending her head towards Sherlock's embrace. She is Ok, not hurt, just furious and outraged at her treatment and pleased that he is not dead.

Sherlock nods, still moving his hands all over her, and then kisses her forehead and says in English, "I will always support you, remember that. I have to go now. But this will be fixed, and I will see you again very soon."

"I love you always," Liesl says in German.

"Yes," says Sherlock, and then turns and strides from the room.

After a moment John follows, and no one stops him.

* * *

Upstairs in the police station there are recently-painted rooms, and softer lighting, and bustle and efficiency. Sherlock leads John through a processing area for new arrests, where there is a coffee machine and rows of fixed plastic seating. There is also the exit and, standing white-lit at the top of the steps outside, in a cool black night filled with grasshopper ticking, is Mycroft.

"You're here then," Sherlock says. Hard to seem it, given the circumstances, but he supposes he is pleased to see his brother.

"Yes. And your car is also here, and it would be best if you both got into it and drove away so that you cannot help with the inquiries which are already beginning to be made." Mycroft eyes Sherlock. "I see Liesl was not arrested with the others."

"John got her." He has had the arrest report. He had to rewrite most of it for them. It does not matter. Mycroft's people will sort it out. Mycroft promised, a long time ago.

"Indeed. Your own improvement to my plan, I imagine. And what about the detonator? I'm told that you were caught trying to prevent the explosion. Very unwise and highly perilous." Mycroft's eyes flash. Is that concern, for him? Perhaps it is. The bomb thing was stupid, now Sherlock considers it. But it seemed right at the time, an attempt to preserve life and contribute more to the end of this unpleasant operation. "It is lucky that Dr Watson was able to point some resource towards retrieving you before the device went off, although –" switching his glare to John – "it would have been even more helpful to have been informed directly."

John stares back blandly, not justifying his actions. He never lets Mycroft intimidate him. Sherlock loves that. John looks tired, though. Sherlock will stop for coffee as soon as they are clear of this place.

"And are you still adamant that you wish to take no credit for this operation?" Mycroft asks.

Sherlock nods. "I am the victim," he states. "Unbeknownst to me, my beloved wife was at the heart of a vicious terrorist organisation, et cetera et cetera." He shrugs. He has probably just written at least one of tomorrow's headlines. He couldn't care less.

"That makes you look more than a little foolish," Mycroft says. "You will lose credibility."

Usually this is guaranteed to annoy Sherlock. Needling him on intelligence? A sure-fire way to get a reaction...but not tonight. Not with John standing, arms folded, steady and calm at his side, and this mission, this year of misery, seeping away into the almond scented sky.

Sherlock waves his hand. "There are more important things to worry about than my reputation," he says, and gives Mycroft a disdainful glare of his own. Come on, tell me that my authority with future clients is more vital than international terrorism. Of course you can't, so leave it.

This was his decision, months previously, that he would play the innocent even once Liesl was unmasked. He does not require credit as a secret agent. He never wants to do this sort of work again, so it is not as if he wants this on his CV.

Mycroft purses his lips. "You make that sound suspiciously plausible," he says. "I will of course continue to watch you... Both," he adds, but Sherlock is already clasping John's elbow to leave. "The tower room, I believe?" Mycroft calls as Sherlock leads the way down the station steps.

The Audi is parked outside. The police towed it here, presumably. John hands Sherlock the keys.

"I'll keep you informed," Mycroft adds, strolling languidly to the car as John gets in and Sherlock, already in place, starts the engine.

"Don't bother," says Sherlock, throwing the car into gear, "I am now on holiday."

He glances archly at Mycroft and winds the window up. John is beside him, his eyes alert, watching everywhere for further danger. Utterly calm. Deadly if need be. Brilliant. Sherlock gives John a nod, lets in the clutch and the Audi surges away.


	32. Unlikely

It happens when they stop for coffee, at a very civilised Italian rest area which serves food on plates with metal cutlery and table service, despite being basically a motorway services and petrol station.

It is midnight. The restaurant is reasonably busy with travellers like themselves, taking a break before slogging on down the coast towards work or home or holiday. There is a pleasant background hubbub of Italian conversation, coffee machines, crockery clatter and the occasional rumble of an articulated lorry in the blackness outside the bright-lit windows.

They order coffee and wait. John takes Sherlock's jacket and goes to hang it up on the hat-stand – more evidence that the Continent simply does some things better – and as he reaches up to hook it over, Sherlock sees a corner of cardboard sticking up from John's back jeans pocket.

It is familiar. Specifically, his own large initial S in bold black ink, is familiar. His heart gives a twist. John knew. Has known, the whole time he has been in Italy. No wonder he seemed so sure.

John turns and sits down and Sherlock says, "You read my postcards."

John closes his eyes. Gets the postcard out of his pocket and lays it on the table. "Yes. I'm sorry-"

The postcard is the last one Sherlock wrote, with their initials intertwined like a signature, like something meant to be. John is saying how he only opened the package to find out where to meet Sherlock – but Sherlock does not care. What he had thought was a discovered certainty, grown from their months and years of friendship into this solid desire, was in fact born of seeing Sherlock's own feelings. And what he had thought was private, was not.

John is still talking. Sherlock cuts across him. "You had no right to do that," Sherlock says. "That was private."

"If you didn't want me to know," John says, "why did you -"

"I still can't believe you never knew before," Sherlock says. "I could hardly have been more obvious. Even you should have seen."

"You kissed me," says John.

"Yes."

"But then nothing," says John.

Sherlock frowns. "Not nothing. Very far from nothing."

Hand holding and touches of lips to mouth, caresses of neck and fingers and hair, gentle touches intended to check, confirm, ask. OK, also to entice. It would have enticed him, had their situations been reversed. John's fingers on his neck, John allowing his hand to brush Sherlock's as they stood side by side in the lift at the police station, John appearing beside him in the mirror and smoothing down hair which had strayed from its proper place with the removal of a coat. It did entice John, Sherlock knows it did. John allowed it, sighed at it, gazed at him and seemed to long for more of it, much more.

But Sherlock likes to be slow and certain, and John wanted everything all at once and Sherlock was sure, but not ready. It is hard to explain.

Sherlock stares at John as the coffees are placed in front of them. "Did you think I would stop at kissing?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Unlikely."

"I thought - I just thought that was all there was. A kiss. A bit of... stroking. Hand holding." John is squirming.

Sherlock narrows his eyes at him. "Do those things convey nothing to you?"

"Well. A bit."

Anger wells up and he makes an effort not to raise his voice. "Tell me, what do you think it means when someone strokes your hair, holds your hand, takes you out for food or drink or to go and see interesting things? What does it mean when you kiss someone hello every evening after you get home from work? What would that mean, John, if it was not me?"

"But it was you."

Sherlock smacks the table. "For god's sake, John. I was being as obvious as I could be. Tell me what it meant."

"You loved me," says John.

"Yes," says Sherlock. He drinks coffee. It is excellent. He lets the bitter strength settle across his tongue, lets a bean from a distant South American hillside bring him some measure of control.

"Why didn't you do anything?" asks John.

"I have just explained how I did do quite a lot." He frowns. Shakes his head. "Is that really what happened? That because we had not got as far as sex in two months, it must mean that I was never going to be interested?"

John looks very guilty.

"Oh my god," says Sherlock. "Have you never heard of taking things slowly?" The anticipation, the part of the affair before it becomes an affair, this is the best stage of all. When all possibilities might bloom, before just one outcome has become reality, before a path has been chosen and a destination is clear, these times are the best times because nothing is finished and everything can still be begun.

"You? Slowly?" John's face is incredulous.

"Why not?" What is so wrong with him that he apparently would not take things slowly?

"I always thought you would be –"

"Yes?"

"Impatient. Demanding. -Unstoppable." John speaks wistfully, on the last word.

"That's not how it is," says Sherlock, "with me."

"Sorry."

Sherlock sighs. The coffee is soothing him. He grasps at control. "Ok. Fine. You read my postcards. Fine. I suppose one more knife-wound to the shreds of my dignity won't make any difference."

"Sherlock - I'm sorry. I never meant to hurt you."

"You never thought," Sherlock says, and inspire of himself, bitterness spills out. "You wanted sex, and you didn't notice that you were having it with someone who wanted it with me, and you didn't notice that - I –" He crushes his mouth closed and sits frowning and shaking his head, adding sugar to his espresso.

"Can I make it up to you?" John asks. "I don't mean the sex part. I mean. Can we be friends?"

"No," says Sherlock in outrage. "We damn well cannot be friends. Come back and be – mine, or don't be at all. I am truly sick of being friends."

John stares at him. "You would take me back?"

"Of course. Why are you so stupid? What makes you think I would want anything else? Yes, naturally, having just been through a year of hell seeing you marry someone else, if there was a chance for us to be together I would ignore that and opt instead for some platonic shadow of a relationship. Of course. That's me, very me."

"Sherlock –"

"Shut up." Tears are very close and he will not weep, no more bloody crying, not after all this.

They stir their coffees viciously.

* * *

"Please take me back," says John. Sherlock has been furiously silent all through their second cup of coffee, glaring out of the window and ignoring all attempts by John to catch his eye.

Sherlock is not looking at him.

"On any basis," says John. It is true. At this point he cannot lose Sherlock from his life. No matter what it takes.

Sherlock finally looks up. "Self esteem issues?" he asks.

"No," says John. "I could handle being just your friend. If I had to. If that's all you wanted. I could do that. And I am fine with being - more than that. I would prefer that, actually. Since you're asking. We never had a chance to –"

"You never gave me the chance to-"

"Yes all right - but anyway we never - and I would like that. A lot." It has taken him all year to know this, it has taken being with the wrong person for nine months to understand what a partnership should be. And when you love someone as more than a friend, how you want to show them what you feel.

"Shut up," Sherlock says again. He is scowling. Hiding emotion.

"If you'll have me," says John.

Sherlock will not speak.

John sighs. He reaches across and takes Sherlock's hand. Sherlock makes his hand go limp in John's, giving nothing. Punishing him a bit more. It is fair enough, really.

John thinks of Sherlock on the day John got married. His dark grey suit, his serious eyes, his pale fingers as John gave him the agate ring.

_"Bello_," John says, glancing up from Sherlock's hand under his, to Sherlock's face, and back down again. He laughs ruefully. "_Bello, bello, bello."_

Sherlock shifts restlessly and scowls, but his hand is now tight around John's fingers. "_Pericoloso_," he says obscurely. "Hah. _Il mio._"

John waits, those long fingers entwined in his. Sherlock's hand is hot. He is still wearing the signet ring. John lifts their hands and kisses the inside of Sherlock's wrist. Sherlock goes still. John mentally shrugs - kissing a bloke's hand in an Italian cafe at midnight, what the hell. The locals would probably be more offended by the fact that John is wearing jeans and Doc Martens. John presses Sherlock's thumb to his lips, fingernail against his bottom lip, kisses the calloused pad of Sherlock's thumb. "Sherlock," says John quietly. "I want us to be together. If that's what you want."

Sherlock's hand is against his lips. John has no intention of letting it go, not now, not as fresh coffees are placed in front of them by a waiter who does not make any kind of eye contact, not as Sherlock pushes a twenty euro note to the guy with his free hand, not as the steam rises from two tiny cups like the heat which is building now across the table, not ever. Sherlock's hand in his, holding onto his even though he is pretending he isn't. John is doing this, and Sherlock is permitting it, and that must be good. John realises that he is saying _please, please, say yes, _in his mind. Pride won't let it past his lips but if Sherlock looked at him he would see it in his eyes.

Sherlock does look up then. Stares at John and gives the least gracious shrug John has seen on anyone over the age of fourteen. "All right," he says. "Obviously. I already said so."

John grins. Squeezes Sherlock's hand tightly and feels the grip returned, doubled, painful, wonderful. He loves Sherlock's strength. And even though he has promised that things will proceed as slowly as Sherlock wants, John is thinking, you, the hotel room, that enormous bed, right now.

Sherlock uses his free hand to stir the new cup of coffee. "The hotel," he says casually. "When we've had these."

"Ok," says John. He will have to let Sherlock set the pace. He must. He can manage that. Probably.

Their clasped hands clench and unclench together on the table in a rhythm of relief and desire.

They drink.


	33. Glittering diamonds

Sherlock has John's hand in his as they climb the tiled stairs to the tower room. No one is here to see, Mycroft is busy although has predictably predicted what will take place here in Italy, and this is the moment Sherlock has hoped for all year.

They walk along the thick blue carpet to the door marked Honeymoon suite. Hard not to think about John here with Mary, but then it was hard not to the first time Sherlock was here, when he identified this room as a useful future rendezvous, because of the secret roof access. Except then there was hope that it might not happen, and now it has happened. John has given no details, but Sherlock has imagined many things many times and has tortured himself to the point of boredom with the sickening ideas.

He breathes deeply and calms his mind. This is now and he is here. He feels John squeeze his hand. A miracle, that John would even accept such a mundane contact. Clichéd and dull yet wonderful.

He stops suddenly, still in the corridor, and takes John's other hand, forcing him to drop his bag, and kisses his lips, and now that things are open between them John is no longer passive, no longer merely accepting. He is like he was the first time, when Sherlock was too drunk to retain control, too in lust to think about the consequences, and John simply kissed him back and gave more than he got, which is how he is now, pushing Sherlock against the odd cushioned walls of the hotel and using his greater strength to raise Sherlock's hands above his head, pinning him at the wrists and shoving his hips against Sherlock and using technique Sherlock would never have suspected of John given his general lack of success in the relationship department.

Of course Sherlock has only ever seen John with women. He knew about the men, of course – living together as they did, how could he not – but John around women showed none of this confidence, only a kind of artificial, ironic cockiness. This John is certain, bold, using his ridiculous good looks to full advantage. God, he's good.

No one else could have moved Sherlock, last winter, from tentative kiss on the lips to stretched out on the carpet groping and snogging inside of a minute.

They are kissing now and murmuring words of want and adoration when Sherlock sees the first blue light in front of his eyes. A second later there is a kaleidoscope of silver and transparent shifting diamonds. "Oh –"

He closes his eyes. John feels him lose track of the kiss and pauses, breathing hard.

"What's wrong?"

It is no good. The blue lights are crowding across his vision, eyes open or shut. And the glittering diamonds are waiting around the edges to bring the pain. "Migraine," says Sherlock. He lets out a low noise as the hurt begins, this time around his jaw but it will fill his head very quickly.

John steps back, and although he has his eyes shut Sherlock knows John is staring into Sherlock's face, examining him. John's fingers press on his right wrist, taking his pulse. Why do doctors do that? Some kind of reflex, must be the first thing you learn in medical school. A way to buy time, like cleaning glasses or lighting a cigarette. God, a cigarette, another thing he must now give up, again.

"Let's get inside," John says, and puts his arm round Sherlock's shoulders and they stumble into the bedroom.

"I'm sorry –" He cannot open his eyes.

"For pity's sake, what for? -I never knew you got migraines."

"Not often. Just –" Just when there is too much emotional strain.

"It's ok, sit down."

Sherlock feels the edge of the bed behind his knees, sits.

"Do you take painkillers for it?" John, solicitous but efficient.

"No."

"What do you do?"

"Lie down, do nothing." Now the pain is behind his eyes and in his ears. Nausea sweeps through his body. If there is a worse moment than this to feel physically sick he cannot imagine it.

He sinks onto the bed with his arm across his eyes. John is moving about, closing curtains, locking the door. And something else: going onto the roof, checking. Coming back down, closing that door too. Sensible John.

"Let me help," John says. "You can't rest in that lot."

"Can." It hurts to talk.

John ignores him and starts taking off Sherlock's shoes. Sherlock wriggles and kicks them off himself.

"Leave the socks," he says thickly. John does, and begins unbuttoning Sherlock's shirt. He does it gently, efficiently, like a doctor – how many times has John run his hands over Sherlock like this, checking for wounds, for signs of imminent demise? – but as the final button is undone Sherlock feels John's lips against his belly and hears John say, "I just wanted the excuse." Sherlock chuckles although it sends a needle of pain to the top of his scalp.

John removes shirt, belt and trousers with practical calm, and Sherlock climbs into the bed and lies flat trying not to be present as the lights explode behind his eyelids in flares of tight heat.

This was definitely not what he hoped to be doing this evening. On the other had it was perfectly predictable had he taken the time to consider it. It has been a strange day. And a strange year.

"Rest," says John.

Sherlock reaches out for John's hand again and lies holding it for a while. "Sorry," he says again. The nausea is subsiding a little. "Unfair to leave you – hanging –"

He breaks off as another salvo of lights bursts across his temples. He releases John's hand and flings his arm back across his face. "Just need to lie still -"

"And there I thought you just sulked a lot," says John. He leans over Sherlock and kisses his hair. "The other stuff can wait." His breath is warm, and he smells of coffee and amaretti. "We can do all that later."

That word _later_ is the best thing Sherlock has heard in a year. "Yes," he whispers. Talking hurts.

"Promise," says John easily, and that is what Sherlock loves, right there, the unworried certainty which John shows in his friendships and now, it seems, his ... relationships. My lover, thinks Sherlock, although they have done nothing at all yet, but the promise, the intent is there and he starts smiling and John lies down in the bed beside him – undressed? Yes, as far as T shirt and boxers – and snuggles a little and carefully winds his leg over Sherlock's, then when Sherlock does not protest – god, as if he would – relaxes and lies idly brushing Sherlock's shin with the sole of his foot, which is pleasant, and from time to time, kissing his shoulder, which is truly sweet.

Desire lies crushed beneath the punishing heel of the migraine but Sherlock does not care because there is warmth and affection radiating from John, and Sherlock can picture his perfect face quite readily, gazing at Sherlock with kindness and concern. Desire will come back once the migraine recedes, and they can restart the process of becoming whatever it is that they were becoming last Christmas. That is fine.

"I love you," John says clearly, against Sherlock's shoulder.

Sherlock gives John's hand a squeeze but does not reply. Really, John has appalling timing. Maybe this is why all the girlfriend disasters. Declarations of love over a migraine, obviously wrong.

Speech is fragmenting, but he manages to say just, "Later," and then sinks back and lets the blue lights wash over him.


	34. Magnetism of want

Next day, John is woken by the sound of running water. Sherlock is already in the shower. "Going for breakfast in a minute," Sherlock calls. "I'll meet you down there."

John gets up, slowly, and by the time he has run his hands through his hair and thought Right, Italy, me and Sherlock in the honeymoon suite – Sherlock has dressed at lightning speed in the bathroom and given John a wave, disappearing out the door.

John showers and goes down. The breakfast room in the hotel is in the basement, a mural of windmills painted on the blue walls, and pastries, meats, cheese and fruit piled in pyramids on the buffet table. Sherlock is finishing what appears to be a plate of pasta on toast. "I need carbohydrates," he says. "They cooked it for me."

John starts buttering toast as Sherlock gets up. "Take your time," he tells John. "Going for a walk on the beach." He stands beside John's chair but does not touch him.

"Text me," says John, gripped by a fear of Sherlock disappearing across Europe.

"If there's a signal," Sherlock says vaguely.

This from a man who has texted from showers across most of the continent.

"I'll come and find you," John says firmly.

"All right."

John tries to stay sanguine and enjoy a delicious breakfast but can't. He bolts down a minimum of food, thinking, Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will force him to sit with me dammit, then jumps up and walks out of the hotel, across its patio and down four sun-bleached wooden steps onto the beach.

This is where he and Mary skinny dipped. He shoves those memories aside. Nice at the time but she was not Sherlock. Strange that Sherlock, already, last winter, knew and was sure, and John, unaware, hung back. If Sherlock had been a woman John would have been leading him by the hand into bed - or sofa, or anywhere - that very first night. But he assumed that Sherlock would lead, if anyone - and when he did not, took it as reluctance, or that the experience was not intended to go further.

Stupid. Why would Sherlock in love be different from anyone else? Why would he need less encouragement, less seduction than John gave Mary? No reason.

John steps into the sand, scanning the beach. His gaze sweeps across ice-cream-branded beach umbrellas stacked for use, white plastic sun loungers ditto, a stretch of empty sand. Beyond it, the Med, silver blue in the early morning haze.

To John's right is the public beach, marked off by a tall woven jute fence. To the left are red rock cliffs, and above them, pine trees and houses.

John spots a figure in black, poking about among the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. Relief. He strolls across.

As John approaches Sherlock turns, holds up a hand in greeting. He shrugs off his jacket as if it did not cost three hundred pounds, and tosses it onto a rock. Rolls up his shirt sleeves and crouches to plunge his hands into a rock pool.

John arrives. The water reflects him, standing, and Sherlock's face bent close to the surface. The sun is not yet on this part of the beach and the air is chilly, enlivening.

"Anemone," Sherlock says, pointing. He stirs the water, disturbing many tiny creatures. "And whole shoals of fish, how do they manage when the sun heats up this area during the day? They must be able to tolerate an amazing range of temperatures."

"And being poked," says John. He perches on a rock and takes off his shoes and socks. Sherlock leans back on his haunches and watches John, droplets of sea water on his hands.

"What," says John, stuffing socks into shoes and stretching his toes out on the cool damp sand. There is a wonderful freedom about bare feet. Sherlock's eyes are wide.

"Nothing," says Sherlock. He rubs his hands dry on his trousers. He is wearing jeans, John notices. Black, of course. Wouldn't want to clash with the jacket. The grey silk shirt, the dark hair artfully ruffled: Sherlock's vanity.

"Come for a walk," John suggests.

Sherlock shrugs, stands, abandoning the jacket - they are as yet alone out here - and he and John stroll down to the water's edge. John paddles, yelping at the cold but Sherlock hangs back. "What, your dignity won't take it?" teases John, at which Sherlock only shrugs and says "Basically."

They make their way back to the cliffs as the sun warms the sand, Sherlock stopping to examine pebbles and seaweed like a child. He is still withdrawn, uncommunicative. John has not got within three feet of him all morning.

John detours back up to the hotel and grabs a couple of cold lemonade cans from the bar. He and Sherlock retreat to their nook beneath the cliffs to drink. Sherlock sits, knees up, his back against a rock, and sips, his eyes watching the distant sea. John is at an angle to him, similarly posed, watching him.

"Romantic," says John, gesturing at the deserted beachscape. It is a little forced, but he suspects that unless one of them starts it they could spend all day making polite conversation. And he knows, now, that that is not what either of them want.

"Don't really do romance," says Sherlock.

"Yeah you do." John has read the file detailing Sherlock's seduction of Liesl. Some parts twice, with dry mouth.

Sherlock sips lemonade and does not answer. His face is set, his gaze on the sea, but his eyelashes are flickering.

"Why didn't you try all that on me?" John says. "Wine, dine, smart clothes. I would have noticed. I would have – it would have worked."

Sherlock looks all around, frowning, and not at John. "Really?"

"Yes! Really."

"That's just odd." Sherlock speaks dismissively.

"No, it's not. It's what people do."

"I am not people. I wanted to share something real with you. Those things are overdone, clichéd." He takes John's empty can and places it neatly with his own.

"Sherlock. If you put on a DJ and took me out to dinner and then kissed me in the car on the way home –"

"-The lift –"

"Never mind! - then I would understand what you were trying to say. I would get it. I'm hyperventilating just thinking about it. So please, do not rule out clichés when it comes to me because I am made of clichés."

"All right. Made of clichés. Noted." A smile has started, under the lowered eyelashes.

"I'm serious," says John.

"What would you do to seduce me?" Sherlock asks, and turns to John.

John has no idea. "Um," he says.

"Exactly," says Sherlock.

"No, wait," says John. "If I thought it would work on you I would try anything. Dates in pubs. Restaurants, dinner. We have fun when we go out for dinner."

"Usually because Lestrade texts me with a murder," says Sherlock.

"Yes. Well, I would ask him to text you."

Sherlock smiles. John sees it and relaxes. "What else."

"I don't know. OK. Here's one. I would get you lab time in a place you could never normally get access to. I would pull strings." Mycroft, he is thinking, I would get Mycroft to arrange it because you would never ask and Mycroft would never just give it to you.

"Ok," says Sherlock, "that would work."

"Good." And why has he never done this for Sherlock? He knows now what Sherlock's next birthday will involve.

"What else?" Sherlock's eyes are bright with interest.

"I can't just give away the crown jewels," says John.

"You haven't thought of anything else," Sherlock accuses.

"Give me a chance!"

"You had three years," Sherlock points out.

"Of _not realising,_ yes. Hold on, ok, I would ... take you to a concert. Something really beautiful. Make you sit still and listen. Classical," he adds, in case Sherlock thinks he means Robbie Williams.

"Ok," says Sherlock, "that would also work."

"Right," says John, "I would ..."

"Never mind that," says Sherlock. "What would you do when we got home?"

John freezes.

"I mean," says Sherlock. "You've won me over with music or murder or science, then what? Home, cup of tea, see you tomorrow?"

"No," says John. "Obviously not."

"But you've just never thought about it."

"No, I –" He has thought about it a lot. "I would hold your hand in the cab," he says. "I would take off your glove and hold your hand." He can picture it, a rainy London night, water speckling the cab windows and John slowly drawing off Sherlock's leather glove, right hand, and slipping his fingers, warm, between Sherlock's.

Sherlock blinks. Stares hard at John.

"I would put my hand on your waist as I unlocked the door to the flat," John says.

"Go on," says Sherlock.

John closes his eyes, sitting on a mild Italian beach but picturing instead a blustery night in London, climbing the stairs to their warm and untidy flat. "I would take your coat off and hang it up for you," he says. "Drop my coat on the floor. Push you into a chair –"

"Push –"

"Yes."

"Oh-"

"Push you into a chair and take your hand again and feel your fingers one by one and say- "

John stops and opens his eyes.

Sherlock is staring at him, lips parted. "What?"

"You'll have to wait and see," says John. He shrugs. "If it ever happened. You'll have to wait." He challenges Sherlock with a smirk.

Sherlock scowls. Then smiles. "Ok," he says. "Good. I like it. In fact, that definitely works. Good. Good."

"You're babbling," says John. He is trying to keep a serious face and failing because Sherlock's smile is infectious. They are sitting with three feet of air between them but they are, finally, together.

Sherlock reaches across, takes John's hand and through sheer magnetism of want draws John into a kiss which starts with them sitting close together, knees drawn up, but quickly becomes a tight clasp, toppling onto the sand to stretch out, arms around each other and legs tangling, hands in each other's hair and the kiss goes on and on.

Sherlock's hands stay on John's back, sometimes slipping down his arms or up to his neck, but nowhere more intimate than that. John is not so self-restrained and spiders his fingers in Sherlock's hair, then over his back, under his grey shirt - bare skin - and over his shoulder blades and down the slow curve of his spine. Sherlock's warm body, his soft smooth skin, his kisses which go beyond skill and into a realm of communication which speaks pure passion through touch, his unmistakable arousal as his leg slides between John's – John hears gasps and soft cries and they are coming from his own mouth. His toes curl around Sherlock's ankles and he realises that Sherlock is still in his Oxford brogues.

"You've still got your shoes on," John says, breaking the kiss. He lies on his side, Sherlock facing him, their noses almost touching. "How can you be on the beach in those shoes – in any shoes?"

"If it bothers you, take them off," says Sherlock.

And with that comes the revelation and the idea in a single moment.

Sherlock stroking John's feet last winter. And how people tell you what they wish you would do.

John, now, an instant after the memory, kneeling next to Sherlock to unlace his left shoe. The leather of shoe and soles is very fine, and now half wrecked by sand and salt water.

John undoes both shoes, draws them off and sets them aside. Sherlock wriggles, sits up again, his back against his rock. John grasps Sherlock's left ankle and runs his palm over Sherlock's foot in its black sock. The sock is incredibly soft. Is it - silk? John's fingers say yes. He slides the sensuous knit downward.

Sherlock has lovely feet. Long and elegant like his hands. Pale skin, soft, especially across the top of his foot. John trails his fingertips across that softness as he tugs the sock down a little further, casts it away.

Sherlock takes John's right hand and kisses it, curling John's fingers into his palm and crushing them in his fist, then releasing.

John bends, kisses the sweet skin beneath the knuckle of Sherlock's toes.

When he looks up once more the veil has fallen, he can see Sherlock's face as it was last year, incredulous and hopeful. Sherlock is breathing through his mouth as John caresses his foot. John adjusts his hand so that his thumb is in contact with the sole, and Sherlock gasps, grabs John's shoulder and says, "Yes."

* * *

Foot sex. It is a new thing for John but he guesses he can work it out. He strokes and kisses, and slips his whole fist back and along Sherlock's bare foot. Sherlock's fingers are on his shoulder, digging in, shoving at him, pushing his head down. He thinks he probably ought to be slow rather than sudden, but Sherlock's clenched fingers are becoming painful with their urgency, and so John bends and takes Sherlock's toe into his mouth.

Sherlock's skin tastes of fruity shower gel - has he washed in peaches? - and Sherlock says "Oh god. Yes," and strokes John's hair increasingly vaguely as he watches his foot being ravished by John's mouth and palms.

John runs his tongue over Sherlock's foot, cradling it in his left hand, eliciting a sharp cry, and, freeing his right hand, trails up Sherlock's shin, rough denim, down his muscled thigh, and stops, lifts his head to look at Sherlock's face.

Sherlock is giving him a look of such equi-balanced Yes and No that John is frozen.

John takes a breath and moves - closes his mouth over several toes at once, thinking that if this is the response to just a toe -

Sherlock shivers all over, and hauls John up to eye level while simultaneously sliding them both down onto the sand, finishing with Sherlock flat on his back and John beside him. The rusty rocks rise up on either side.

"What's wrong?" John asks, wrapping his arms around Sherlock.

"Nothing. Nothing!" Sherlock kisses him, and John feels his hot tongue, claiming each tooth. "It just gets - too much - very quickly." He is panting a little. So is John. They are still nearly fully clothed but he is conscious of pressing hard against Sherlock's left leg. John leans up on his right elbow, and lets his left hand trace a slow path down Sherlock's body from shoulder, over firm chest and smooth flat belly under that grey shirt, down onto his belt. Sherlock strokes John's jaw. John's hand is on the leather belt, getting his fingers into the buckle while keeping eye contact. He struggles with it, and Sherlock's warm right hand covers his own, does the fiddly bit. Their hands rest together on the zip of Sherlock's jeans for a minute, and John leans over on one elbow and kisses Sherlock slowly, exploring willing wetness and caressing Sherlock's tongue with his own, feeling Sherlock gasp, his hand on John's gripping suddenly, pressing down.

John moves his hand, and a tremor of anticipation run through Sherlock, from tongue to hips. John slips his hand - not down, but up under the shirt and onto Sherlock's warm belly, caressing the line of hair over his navel, spreading and pressing across each rib, then down into the sweet gap between the last rib and the hip.

Sherlock shifts in the sand, shucking the jeans a little. And then John breaks free of the kiss to turn his head and watch as he slides his hand down over Sherlock's navel, and inside the trunks.

Sherlock cries out as John's fingers touch hot damp flesh, and John in turn moves closer, gets proper contact against Sherlock's side, knows that Sherlock can feel his arousal too, lets out a long sigh and sees Sherlock open his eyes, very blue, and trembling.

"Look at me," Sherlock breathes. "I want you to see."

Their eyes are eight inches apart, their breath synchronising as John's hand trails lower.

Sherlock slides his arm under John and pushes his hand into the small of John's back, fingers stretching down inside the waist of John's jeans, holding him close. His right hand cups John's face, reminding him, asking him, not to break eye contact. His gaze is fixed on John, breath in shallow gasps, lips moving as if to form words which never appear.

John whispers, "Sherlock," hesitating, seeking permission even as he shifts down a little to better reach.

Sherlock gives a very slight eye roll and takes John's hand and places it correctly. John gasps as sensationally silky skin communicates hard desire to his fingers. Sherlock shivers too and lets his head fall back into the sand. He lifts up though to embrace John once again as John explores and worships and sees his touch in Sherlock's eyes.

"Be slow," says Sherlock on an outbreath.

"Glacial," murmurs John.

John sees Sherlock's eyes flare blue, his pupils pulsing, and then close as the moment shudders through him, and Sherlock holds John tightly and John feels warmth and wetness, and sees tears leaking from under Sherlock's eyelashes, and hears his name.

* * *

Sherlock is not much for declarations in moments of passion, but this, here, his hair full of sand and his arms full of John, is an exception and he says "John, John," many times, the ultimate sentence, a statement, request, confirmation all in one word. It might not be a traditional offer of love or perhaps it is, but John holds Sherlock tightly anyway for long minutes afterwards, breathing hard into his shoulder, no words, caressing Sherlock's hip very softly with his left ring finger, and does not ask for anything in return, which is like him.

"You always forget," says John.

"What," says Sherlock.

"Not you. I mean, people. You forget what it is like to get inside someone's personal space. What a ... privilege it is. To be right next to someone."  
John is stroking Sherlock's forehead, his eyebrows. Bizarre.

"Someone beautiful," Sherlock says, combing John's hair with his fingers. John's blush throws back heat onto Sherlock's hand. "So beautiful," Sherlock repeats. "Why are you embarrassed? It's true."

John clearly does not want to call Sherlock a liar. He wrinkles his nose. "No accounting for taste," he tells him. "I always thought the looks were all on your side."

"No," Sherlock says, "the brains are on my side. You're the looks."

"Thank you. I think."

Things disintegrate a little then as they kiss and caress each other's hair and faces, smiling and blinking away tears. John whispers many things into Sherlock's ear, increasingly foolish and ridiculous things until Sherlock says "Stop, stop," and starts laughing and has to clutch John and roll over to lie on top of him and kiss him to get him to stop with the outrageous declarations and John does stop but only because he has got what he wanted.

"Talk to me," says John. He shifts them a little then takes Sherlock's wrist, is guiding his hand.

"What do you want me to say?" John's waist is so taut and firm, blissful. John is stronger than him and yet showing this tender side does not diminish him, quite the reverse. It takes strength to show weakness. Sounds like some kind of ancient proverb. Maybe it is... his mind is wandering even as his hand is.

"Anything. Good things. Bad things. Anything."

Bad things? Sherlock leans away from John to frown at him, deduce the meanings.

"Or a shopping list, or lab results," says John, "just talk to me." He sits up suddenly, peels off his T shirt, rests down again and pulls Sherlock back into position. "Your voice," he adds. "Your voice in my ear..."

Oh. "All right." Not a voice alone, of course. Sherlock spreads his fingers down, detecting scar tissue, smooth chest, every muscle, every inch of flesh crying out for attention from fingers, and mouth, although mouth will have to wait. John is shuddering, going to pieces at Sherlock's touch, even though John obviously has much more expertise at this. He is deteriorating and it is because the hands on him are Sherlock's. Oh that is good. Even when he is only doing the touching, that is so good.

Sherlock remembers to breathe. He must speak, John wants his voice, his words. John has his face in Sherlock's neck and the words are suddenly simple. "I love you," Sherlock says, and John clutches him, vibrating with passion and surprise.

So simple, yet these words have sent ripples through John, through him, through all that there is between them, and it becomes clear that John thought he might never hear those words, that he thought Sherlock was repressed, or unemotional, or any of the things he presents with his spiky exterior, instead of just very private and rather shy. But John has unlocked this for him and made it easy, in that way that he does.

Sherlock kisses John's ear, with breath, mouth, tongue, then speaks again, low and vibrant. "I wrote music for you." John is showing him the way, his fingers deft and as eager as Sherlock's own. Sherlock leans over him, enveloping John's strength with his own and murmurs with his lips against John's ear, "Beautiful, dangerous, mine... _let go_."

* * *

There are voices, distant but growing nearer. The sun is advancing across the sand and soon the fish in the pool will grow warmer. The sky is a deepening blue, cloud free and immense.

They lie at right angles to each other, Sherlock's head on John's chest. John is tracing a line along Sherlock's collarbone. Sherlock's hand rests in the sand, palm up, fingers loose, alongside John's thigh.

"We should move," says Sherlock.

"Yeah."

John gallantly sacrifices his T shirt to the effort to make them look a little less like they have just had sex on the beach. They brush some of the sand out of each other's hair and chuckle and admit that it would not take a genius to deduce what they've been doing. Then Sherlock turns serious. He takes John's hand, preventing him from rising.

"This must be secret between us." Sherlock rubs his thumb around each of John's fingers. "There must be no hint, no suggestion of anything other than friendship."

"Why?"

"I am not ready."

John has the strong impression that Sherlock is lying to him on some level. He frowns, looks hard at him.

"You don't like that answer," Sherlock says.

"It - No, it's fine. I understand. We need to think about this. It would be a big change." John shrugs.

"Yes."

"Discretion, then," says John. "Fine."

"More than discretion. Utter secrecy. Even among friends who may suspect."

"Hmm." John looks at Sherlock. "For now. I am not ashamed of this. Of us. "

Sherlock kisses John's wrist, holds John's palm against his cheek. "Neither am I. But openness must wait. "

"Ok." It does not, however, appear to be totally ok.

Sherlock says, "Imagine you are having an affair with me. Imagine the levels of discretion you would need then. "

"I sort of am having an affair with you," says John. "Seeing as we are both still married."

"Exactly," says Sherlock.

John's eyes dart about. "I need to get back to work," he says.

"Mycroft has sorted it. You're signed off sick for a week. Family issues."

John frowns. "He's convenient, in an intrusive sort of way, isn't he?"

"It was part of the deal. A rest, afterwards, for me or both of us." It was not. Sherlock added it on, at the police station.

"Right. We should get back to the hotel, anyway. Clean up. No hand holding on the way. Right." John is brisk.

Sherlock can see extreme irritation building. "This is not about control," he says, and John's sharp look confirms his suspicion. "This is about protecting the mission, in the first instance, and having a kind of... honeymoon," foolish word, "in the second."

John remains wary.

"Shared control," Sherlock promises. "Between us." He pulls John to his feet. "And even people having affairs hold hands when they are on holiday."

"Yeah, that's how they get caught." But John is relenting, a little.

"Private beach," says Sherlock. "And my brother will have vetted the entire guest register. And staff." He grips John's hand. "Come on. I'll take the risk. If you will."

They hang their shoes around their necks and gather the crumpled jacket and T shirt, and roll up their jeans, even Sherlock, and go barefoot across the sand back to the hotel, leaving a trail of meandering footprints, sometimes close, sometimes further apart, but always together.


	35. Agate

November

There is home, and there is work, and there is love, and there is Sherlock who encompasses all three, filling John with hope and excitement and fear. To be fair, Sherlock causes John less heart-sickening worry these days, and seems to be taking better care of himself in general. It is as if, now he has John, there is more to live for. This is gratifying. The future certainly appears bright and appealing.

There are dimmer moments, of course. The secrecy is tiring. Discretion John can handle. Never one to brag about bedroom exploits anyway. But not to be able to admit to Greg, or anyone, that what everyone always expected, is indeed the case... that got old very quickly.

There is also, still, Liesl.

"I will not discuss Liesl," Sherlock stated at the start, but he does. He mentions her every day, at least once. John cannot decide about it: harping on about your ex is generally unacceptable, but post-mission blather is perfectly normal. Is Sherlock simply winding down after months of undercover work? Is he trying to share his experience with John as friends and lovers do share details from their past?

John has no inclination to talk about Mary. It is still raw, the hurt and his own poor behaviour. He did love her, can still remember clearly why he loved her, and every part of it was so close to being right except for the giant wrong they were inflicting on each other.

Sherlock says, "Liesl wanted sex every single day," and looks at John.

Honestly, what can he say to that? He is not about to get into a comparison of sex drives between himself, Sherlock and Liesl. (Yeah, Liesl would win.) "Some people do," he says non-committally.

"Liesl bullied everyone around her," is another throwaway remark.

"That's unpleasant," John says. A pretty easy one.

"She would hurt me during sex," emerges one night when John is almost asleep.

"What?" He is awake, reflexively checking Sherlock, gazing into his face even though it is one a.m. and pitch black in midwinter, in Sherlock's room at the back of the flat where no streetlights shine in.

"She liked to leave a mark," Sherlock says. "More than a mark."

John swallows. At moments like these Liesl is lucky to be under guard. He waits for Sherlock to add more. He does not trust himself to comment.

"You don't do that," Sherlock says neutrally.

"No," says John. "Not my thing." Is Sherlock suddenly about to reveal that it is his?

"It is unnecessary," says Sherlock. "Imagination is better."

John breathes again. There is a lot of pretend between them, a lot of play but no actual damage. Words and thoughts are powerful enough. "I like imagination," he tells Sherlock, tucking the duvet round him, patting it down even though Sherlock will wreck it again in two seconds, or will just get up and go and work in the living room. "I don't like the idea of you being hurt."

"I know." And then, a small revelation. "I just want you to remember why it was not real."

John holds Sherlock and wills himself back to sleep, Sherlock actually relaxing against him too, and thinks as he drifts off that the reminders cannot come too often. And there is one principal reason for that.

Sherlock visits Liesl. She is in prison in Germany. The trial will not be for months. Sherlock flies out every three weeks and sees her. He is gone less than a day each time, but he goes. He will not talk about what he does there. He maintains that it is about keeping his cover, being the horrified husband.

John says, "You've done horrified. Now do divorce." This is not like the arguments about bringing the morgue home. This is real.

"You're still married." Sherlock, hiding with his head in the microscope after a trip to Berlin.

"Yes, because I have to wait a year. There's nothing to stop you at least starting the process." German divorce law is different from Britain's. The one year rule can be waived in the case of violent or other unreasonable behaviour. Like terrorism.

"I will." Sherlock lifts his head and stares John down, or tries to - they are matched, at this - and in any case it is the end of the discussion.

Everything is good, everything is hopeful, but John wishes he could rid himself of the feeling that Sherlock is hiding something. Something big, important, and about Liesl.

* * *

January

Freezing rain. Miserable, ice-grained fog. Clothes soaked when John arrives at the surgery, and soaked again by the time he gets home. . Criminals always choosing unheated warehouses for their dramatic showdowns. The fire in the Baker Street living room always on.

And Sherlock, one evening, ripping open a letter on his way through the living room and stopping dead. He blinks, walks into the bedroom, shuts the door.

John waits. Whatever it is, Sherlock will tell him. He listens for sounds of back window escape, however. There are none, and after ten minutes Sherlock bounds back into the room, eyes alight.

"John. We need cases. A lot of cases. Sort out the most lucrative looking ones, will you?"

John folds the paper he has been pretending to read. "Ok. Why in particular? You usually ask me to find the least tedious ones."

"We need money," says Sherlock. "A lot of money." He is bouncing around the room. "I'm going to have to give up cases for a bit next year," he tells John. "Not entirely, I could never give it up completely, but here will be demands on my time. We need cash in the bank, enough for, say ten years."

John boggles. Ten _years_?

"Preferably more, Sherlock says, "but say ten years because there are too many unknowns at this stage and I haven't even thought about how I will manage schools and university."

His eyes are bright with excitement and he dashes over to John and takes him in his arms and kisses him and then sends him spinning away. "John, John, John."

"Ok," says John. "Sherlock. Stop. Stop! And tell me right now what was in that letter."

Sherlock gets a small square piece of paper from his pocket. The back is shiny. And on the front, in grey and white – "Liesl's twenty week scan."

* * *

John thought he would feel some jealousy at the physical evidence of Sherlock's sex with Liesl Messernacht. But he doesn't feel jealous at all. He feels a vicarious pride in Sherlock for having done this thing, completely deliberately as it turned out, knowingly. He selected Liesl: "Clever, symmetrical good looks, strong, inevitable prison sentence," and he has fathered a child. Amazing. A miracle. Always a miracle but for him, especially so.

John prays that Liesl delivers a healthy baby.

Sherlock is going to be a father.

John cannot believe it but is so happy for him.

"Not just for me," says Sherlock. "Don't be idiotic. For us."

And then it hits John.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "You said one day," he reminds John. "Well, one day is now." He pauses. A mischievous smile is on his lips. "You may fall slightly into the role left empty by the child's mother."

"Bloody typical," says John.

* * *

"Wait," says John. They are at the table with John's post-shock cup of tea and Sherlock's post-stress nicotine patch. "Did she ... consent to this? You didn't - you didn't –" (Steal her Pill. Stick needles into condoms. Oh God.)

"Of course she consented," says Sherlock, offended. "We planned it as soon as we got engaged."

John goggles. "You planned it. -How-?"

Sherlock frowns. "How do people usually plan it? I asked her, she said yes." He smooths down the patch, sighs. Holds his wrist out to John.

"As simple as that." John does up Sherlock's shirt cuff.

"Yes. Why would it not be simple?"

John sighs. "I don't know. Maybe it's just me. My life never seems that straightforward."

"You've been doing it all wrong," says Sherlock.

* * *

"It is a bit odd. That this was not the result of... love. Two people loving each other."

"Many babies aren't," says Sherlock. They are in bed, Sherlock's room, still talking about it. No sign of sleep.

"I guess that's true," says John.

"Anyway," says Sherlock. "This baby _is_ the result of love. Hers for me and mine for you. That's more than a lot of children have."

John blinks. "You ... were thinking about me. When you –" God, is he twelve, why can he not simply say these things?

"Came," says Sherlock without a trace of embarrassment. "Of course. It was the only way. - It was very strange at first," he concedes, glancing at John to see if this crosses some line of acceptable sharing. "She felt wrong. Obviously."

John gets a vision of Sherlock and Liesl, naked, her legs around him, her head thrown back. She is calling out Sherlock's name and Sherlock is saying nothing at all with his face pressed into her hair. Was that how it was? Is that how Sherlock made a baby with her, with John?

"I probably ought to find that deeply disturbing," says John. "But actually it just makes me want you. Right now."

"Then stop thinking about her," says Sherlock. "I can see you doing it! Think about me."

"Not a problem."

* * *

March

Sherlock lies on John's bed with nothing on, no covers, no clothes. John's room is freezing. They will have to move, probably downstairs to Sherlock's room, but for a few moments, this is nice, a break – quite an extended break - from painting the nursery, cold air on their skin.

On impulse he finds John's right hand and places it on his own belly. Of course his belly is flat, nothing there but muscles, vital muscles which support not just the organs within but also the spine, counter-intuitive, that these abdominals, if weakened, can cause chronic back pain, but the body is full of such unexpected connections.

John watches him, his mouth twitching. "Should I feel for kicks?"

"Shut up. It's just an idea."

"Do you ... Have you felt the baby kick?" John asks. His hand is warm on Sherlock. John is warm all through.

Sherlock nods. "Shall I tell you?" he offers.

"Ok."

"Don't be upset." John does not enjoy hearing about Liesl.

"No."

Sherlock puts his hands behind his head, gazes at the ceiling. "When I visit her. We are allowed to be in a room alone. -Conjugal. We sit on the bed and she talks to me in German and English and we use dialect words because she hates the fact that everything we say is listened to. So we try to fool them with slang and speaking quickly."

John can imagine this very clearly. Sherlock and Liesl, fooling the prison guards.

"I ask about the baby. She tells me everything. You know – what I tell you when I get back. Then I put my hands on her belly and feel. That's it. We don't have sex," he adds.

"It's ok," says John. "That's not what I was asking about."

"She probably couldn't anyway," Sherlock says. "Too big, now."

"I've felt twins, once," John says. "A woman I was called to help when I was out there. She thought it was labour - Anyway, she was all right in the end," he adds quickly, aware that any hint of anything else will send Sherlock to the internet to investigate more outcomes to worry about "-but the thing was, there were two lots of arms and legs in there, and when I felt her bump to check that the babies were ok, I couldn't tell at all which was which. I must have spent ten minutes with my hands on this woman's stomach, with her crying and her husband glowering at me the whole time and holding a rifle."

"What did you tell them?" He likes to hear about John's old life. Likes picturing John, in uniform (of course) being competent in many different arenas.

"I waited till I counted four limbs moving at once and then told them it was fine. And not to shoot me." He grins.

"You never considered a move to midwifery?"

"Strangely no."

They chuckle.

John moves his hands on Sherlock's stomach. "Your child," he says.

"Yes."

"What will it call me? You'll be Daddy, obviously."

Sherlock makes a face at that. So strange. A little person, calling him Daddy. Yet he cannot imagine Father, or Dad, either. He is not used to it yet. He will be.

John says, seeing the face, "Yes, you will. So what will I be?"

John appears anxious. Does he think he will be relegated to being Daddy Two, or Uncle, or some ghastly new age gender-non-specific term indicating shared parenthood? "You'll be John."

"Ok." He nods. "Makes sense. Like everything you do."

"Pasta on toast." His need for carbohydrates when a case has eaten his energy.

"Ok, except that."

* * *

April

They look often at the scan pictures. Sherlock paid for the magic so-called 4D scan, a colour photo with a yellowish tinge and skin, limbs, screwed-shut eyes distinct in the picture.

"This is my evidence," Sherlock says, holding the photo. "Evidence of me. Proof. How I will last, after I am gone. Evidence of us too, that I did this for us."

John has never heard the word spoken with such tenderness. "Evidence," he repeats. "That's... beautiful."

The baby looks very familiar. The shape of the head, the proportions, the way the eyes are set in the tiny skull... "It looks like you," John says, fascinated.

"Yes," says Sherlock. He has spent a great deal of time looking at this picture. It is on his phone, and his computer too. The child is a miniature him. Of course. That is the definition of procreation, that is how it works, that your genetic material combines with another person's and then is there again, in front of you as a new, separate person. Of course it is him. And yet it is mesmerising, seeing that small face, something like Liesl's, something like his.

They have elected not to know the sex of the child. The world's last surprise and none of them, including John, want to spoil it. Plus John's sister would go insane buying accessories in a single colour. Even Mycroft is taking a keen interest and Sherlock suspects that places have been reserved at schools suited for each gender.

"It makes it seem more real, seeing ... you... there," says John.

"Yes."

"A miracle," says John. "Truly." He feels tears.

Sherlock looks at him. "Sometimes," he says.

John bites his lip.

"Sometimes it's good to cry," says Sherlock.

They clutch the photo of the scan and say nothing and Sherlock is right of course, it is good.

* * *

May

He delivers her himself with John watching concerned through the prison maternity suite observation window, because Liesl would not have John in the room.

His first act afterwards is to bring her to the window and hold her up so that John can see. He has a dazzling smile and John is so proud of him and happy for him.

The baby comes home immediately, followed by a supply of frozen milk. This will be Liesl's final contribution. She has assigned Sherlock as guardian, as she will be locked up for the next long while. She has not been relishing motherhood. She is angry and full of jealous hatred for John. Sherlock has been most anxious to remove his daughter from her bitter influence.

Sherlock names the baby after his favourite mineral.

After all, unusual names are a family tradition.

* * *

June

"Is she asleep?" John pushes away his book and stands from the kitchen table. The dishes are done, the bottles sterilised. The flat is dark bar the lamp on the kitchen table and the streetlight glow through the net curtains.

"Yes." Sherlock is in shirt sleeves, his favourite purple shirt, now milk stained, and jeans, tougher than suit trousers. He is yawning and holding the baby monitor. He winces and flexes the arm which has been supporting the baby, and sets his watch for the time of her next feed.

"You should sleep, love," says John. "I'll take first watch."

"Yes. All right. But first I want you to look at something."

Sherlock beckons John to the sofa and they kick off shoes and sit, bare feet, facing each other. Sherlock switches on the floor lamp, causing them both to wince at the brightness, then reaches under the sofa and produces two envelopes.

"I have full custody," he remarks as he hands John the first. "In perpetuity."

"Well done," says John, opening the envelope.

It contains Sherlock and Liesl's decree absolute.

"That was quick," says John. He smiles at Sherlock. Quick, once Sherlock decided to do it. And John understands, now, why Liesl had to believe for so long that Sherlock still loved her. To protect the baby.

"Yes, well," says Sherlock. "It turns out Mycroft has always longed to be an uncle."

John has never thought about that. "Oh my god. Uncle Mycroft."

Sherlock smiles. "Now the other one. Please - look at this and consider."

John opens the envelope, keeping his gaze on Sherlock. Sherlock is trying to hide it but he is on edge, scanning John, eyes flickering as he waits for John's reaction to whatever it is.

John pulls out a sheet of paper. He sees his name and Sherlock's, side by side. An official stamp. The date - the date is the one Sherlock drew beside his and John's initials, on the last postcard he sent.

It is a licence to apply for a civil partnership.

John swallows and tries to say something appropriate.

"Will you," says Sherlock. "-It is not just in case I die."

"You romantic," says John, and it does not come out as teasingly as he intended.

"I already have that in my will," Sherlock says earnestly. "She would go to you, then Mycroft, then your sister, in that order." The baby is always first priority these days, in everything. She has eclipsed the work so completely that John can barely remember it.

"I want us. To be us." Sherlock gestures vaguely. Seems at a loss for words too. He is blinking rapidly, and John looks closely and sees that he is blushing. Sherlock's heart was in that envelope and now it is out, exposed in John's hand, waiting for his answer. "I know we don't need this but -"

"Yes," says John. "To this, yes." He takes Sherlock's hand and feels it trembling against his own.

Sherlock lets out a breath. He gives a very small smile. "Then ... there are these."

From his jeans pocket he pulls two silver rings. When has Sherlock had a chance to organise any of this? How long has he had those rings? John already knows, without needing to see, what is engraved in each of them. "We needn't wait until the ceremony," Sherlock says, "if you don't want to."

"Do you want to wait?" says John.

"No," says Sherlock. "I have done all the waiting I care to, for the moment."

He takes John's hand, slides the ring onto his left ring finger. Smiles, kisses John's palm. John admires the gleaming silver for a moment, then caresses Sherlock's left hand, his long fingers, the neat nails, the sensuous shape of his thumb. He pushes the second silver ring onto Sherlock's ring finger. They smile at each other, hardly breathing. It is done. This thing, at last, done, in five minutes, at one a.m. on a Tuesday night. Sherlock leans towards John and waits for his kiss, a long kiss stretched out together on their sofa with their bare feet twining round each other too.

"I should sleep," Sherlock says, getting up.

"Yes," says John. He stands too, still looking at the rings.

There is a pause.

"You're not going to though, are you?" John says. He looks up at Sherlock with a frown and a hint of anxiety he cannot keep from his voice.

"No," says Sherlock, and takes John by the hand. "Dr Watson." In a flash he has become playful and affectionate.

"Mr Holmes." John can do playful, for this man, even in the wee small hours. Sherlock seems young at these moments, and makes John feel young again too.

Sherlock changes again, and smiles a very predatory smile, one of John's favourites. "Our room."

John pulls Sherlock to him, feels his warm slender body, feels, too, that he is trembling all over. Sherlock is far from immune to romance. And he really was not sure that John would say Yes. As if John would ever refuse him anything he asked. Because although Sherlock claims not to do declarations, he tells John every day with looks and touches and murmurs into his skin that he loves him and always will. And John tells him back, every single time, and many other times besides, that he loves him too, and always will.

"Now," says Sherlock, running his fingertips over John's shoulder blades in a staccato pattern of impatient desire.

John slides his fingers into the waistband of Sherlock's jeans, tugs him in the direction of their bedroom. "Oh yes."

* * *

Agate

She is bright and alert from the moment she appears. Her newborn eyes are the colour of the North Sea at midnight. He talks to her constantly. He holds her in the crook of his arm and she goes everywhere with him. He eats, sleeps, showers with her tiny face against his neck. He tells her everything uncensored and she hears everything which is in his heart. She learns to smile and laugh and clap and babble. He talks and talks to her, and she is clearly mesmerized by the sound of his voice. He is utterly in love with her and fiercely proud of her. And at nine months, her first clearly enunciated word, surprising nobody, is _Proof_.

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**Author's note**. This is the end. I hope you have enjoyed reading this story. Thank you for all the feedback! I love reading reviews and as you know will always try to reply. I do also take suggestions and comments on board. So please keep reading and please definitely keep reviewing, thank you all!

My next story will challenge me to make believable a pairing I had always thought was unlikely... and it won't be johnlock. It will involve sequins, and a song by Erma Franklin, and involuntary flat-sharing...

But first I am going to a Spanish island at a Saharan latitude for a week of sunshine, volcanic landscapes and cerveza. I will endeavour to avoid being truly British and drinking at the English Pub or worse, eating at the English Cafe Everything From UK! which is up the road from where we stay. There is limited internet so I will be forced to rest (that is, to write using pen and paper by the pool, cursing that my handwriting is unable to keep up with my brain).

So for at least a week, adios, -Sef


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